


Roads Are The Dustiest

by AccioRavenclaw



Series: All Roads Lead Somewhere [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: All Characters (mostly) - Freeform, Bisexual Female Character, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Friends With Benefits, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-03-01 13:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 25,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13295910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioRavenclaw/pseuds/AccioRavenclaw
Summary: “And now it’s time for an update on that kid from Vault 101, a gal who proves that not everyone out there is a complete asshole.”Some bits and pieces of the Lone Wanderer's journey across the Capital Wasteland.





	1. Practical Lessons

She stands in the bar bathroom, the lingering odor of stale piss and vomit giving her the beginnings of a headache. Though that could be attributed to several other factors; like the blow to the head she took earlier that day or the ill-advised whiskey she drank after throwing Moriarty his blood-soaked caps. 

Her reflection shows the array of color her face has become, she never knew her skin could be so red. The angry swelling kind of red around the bridge of her nose and muddy red of dried blood still caked below her nostrils. The red of developing sunburnt skin in patches along her forehead and highlighting her cheeks. 

She hardly recognizes herself.

From her belt she pulls the switchblade, the one she collected off the body of the raider who nearly scalped her in the school earlier that morning. The one responsible for the newly acquired red, which will certainly bruise soon, along her nose.

For a minute, she looks into her own eyes in the mirror. Breathes a deep sigh around the stink of the room. Then she pulls the long braid to the side, grips it taunt like the raider had. Another breath and she brings the blade under. 

The blade is dull. She spends several minutes on sawing motions, the muscles in her arms growing sore in complaint, until the long braid comes free. In her hands is her hair, greasy and matted and so long. Because Amata liked it long on her, loved to run her fingers through it while they sat in bed and talked the night away.

But long hair is for the Vault. 

Minutes slowly turn into an hour in that piss stinking stall as she hacks away at her hair, till the longest strands don’t fall over her eyes and her fingers can barely find purchase. Her head feels lighter, and even her fingers feel weird when she rubs them through the uneven stubble. Her fingers search for the ghost of what was previously so long. 

Her reflection looks horrific, but not unlike the other survivors she’s encountered outside the Vault. 

* * *

“How much is a room,” she asks Nova.

The woman grins around her cigarette, names her price, and Grace fumbles with the caps. Bottle caps, not the pre-war slips of paper she looted from the Overseer’s office. But she doesn’t give Nova the same wide-eyed, unsure look she gave Moriarty at the mention of the currency. She counts it as a small victory in navigation of the new world she’s been thrown into.

As soon as the caps are in her hand, she walks up the stairs and finds her room for the night. The room is small and stinks, but not in the same nauseating stink of the bathroom. The air smells stale, heated and confined within the scrap metal walls. It’s smaller than the room back in the vault, but it’s still somewhere for her to rest her head.

She drops the pistol Amata stole for her on the nightstand then crawls into bed. Closes her eyes and tries not to focus on every lump in the old mattress. She tries to tell herself that all she has to do is find her father, then everything will be alright again. 

Tries to ignore the painful holotape sitting in her pocket, his last goodbye that he couldn’t even give her in person. She hasn’t played it yet. She probably won’t either, because that would make it final. Tells herself that it’s not goodbye until she hears him say it. Easier to pretend than face the truth: he lied and abandoned her in the Vault.

But she’ll find him. She hopes – _knows_ – she will.


	2. Occupational Hazards

Grace is hanging out the window of the Washington monument. Her legs are bent at a hard ninety degrees over the window ledge to keep her grounded while she stretches the rest of her body to wire the relay dish into place. Wind whistling in her ears as she slowly works the screwdriver. She’ll be okay so long as she doesn’t look down.

It’s not easy, screwing in the supports on the dish, but the whole job so far hasn’t been easy. Pulling the dish out of the museum was nearly the death of her. The green mutants and their thicker skin can withstand several of her pistol’s bullets before dying. Bullets she’s running dangerously low on among the rest of her meager supplies. 

It’s just another thing to add to her rapidly expanding list of out-of-the-vault survival knowledge. Perhaps Moira was onto something with that book after all. 

Either way, running across the Mall with the dish strapped to her back as she dodged minigun fire was another obstacle. The armored Brotherhood members at the gate of the monument were a relief to see. They weren’t Sarah Lyons or her Pride, but they still fought the mutants chasing her from the trenches. It’s the second time within a day she owes her continued existence to the Brotherhood. 

If she hurries now she might be able to catch back up with them at the GNR building. It’d be nice to have a friend at least. After the fight with the Behemoth Sarah seemed to tolerate her more. She had dropped the attitude she’d had outside of Chevy Chase at least, though that might have been because Grace had brought the attention of a supermutant ambush down on them all. 

For a moment, hanging hundreds of feet above the ground, she scolds herself, “Get it together Grace”. She has no business chasing after the Brotherhood like some lost kid. She must be mistaken about the tolerance, Lyons has better things to do than watch after her. More importantly, she has other more important things to do. Like finding her Father and then returning home to the Vault. Three-Dog’s “Good Fight” isn’t at the top of her list either, she just needs to know where her father went. 

But if there’s one thing she knows from her time as Stanley’s apprentice, she can’t rush the installation of hardware. The last screw tightens into place and she slips the phillips-head back into her belt. Pulls a flip lighter from another pocket and starts to weld the wires into place. It's easier to put them together on the dish than it was to cut them on the bomb in Megaton.

She can feel the burning in her calf muscles and abs as she continues to lean out the monument’s window. This wasn’t an issue working the Vault’s sub-basement in maintenance. Falling to her death and being shot at by the odd mutant wasn’t an occupational hazard either. 

Though she can’t deny the slight feeling of satisfaction at hearing the static fade and Three-Dog’s broadcast come in clear on her pip-boy. The “Good Fight” might not be a priority, but there is good in it as she pulls herself back to solid ground.


	3. Holotapes & Disappointments

She walks out of Underworld with a rifle across her back and a contract in her pocket. Charon walks only a few paces behind her as she leads. 

Ahzrukhal is dead. She cannot say that she feels bad about the body being cleaned from the floor of the bar. She cannot say she feels sorry for the man who asked her to murder a woman just to spite another. 

It was not easy gathering the caps, but she did. Days of scavenging in the ruins around the Mall and negotiating prices with Tulip and Quinn. But now she holds his contract – a man who shot his last employer as a clear kind of warning – and it doesn’t feel like an agreement. It feels like a leash, but she holds it all the same because she needs him.

She can’t clear the memorial on her own.

Willow watches as they emerge from the museum. The remnant of her eyebrows raise when she sees Charon walk with her. Neither she nor Charon say a word, but some understanding passes between them because she salutes them both as they pass.

“Not bad, tourist,” Willow says. 

Grace shrinks away from her gaze as she walks.

* * *

Together they make quick work of clearing out the mutants that have taken up residence in the old memorial gift shop. Charon has training and two hundred years of experience over her, and it shows as they move through the memorial and into the basement. She’s slower with the rifle than he is with the shotgun, but still manages to hold her own as she snipes a mutant brute from down the hall.

Once the memorial is clear of danger Grace starts her search. She rifles through the remnants of the living quarters in the basement. Opens every footlocker, filing cabinet, and checks the mattresses of every bunk. In one room she finds a handful of holotapes on a nightstand. Three tapes, a half-full bottle of whiskey, and a necklace: a long silver chain, black beads, and a cross dangling from a longer piece where the chain reconnects.

She jams each holotape into the port on her pip-boy. Listens to the voice of her father and curiously runs her fingers over the smooth little beads on the necklace. 

She makes it through two of them, listening to her father talk about various aspects of his project before she readies the third. Scrawled on tape are the words, “Better Days” in her father’s handwriting. She pops the tape in and listens as a woman who is not Dr. Li speaks, talks about a mechanical difficulty of the project, and then the woman names her father. Grace listens as the woman flirts and teases, but she can’t bring herself to shut the tape off until it ends abruptly. It’s the first time she’s ever heard her mother’s voice. The realization hits her like a mutant with a nailboard. 

All the times she asked her father if he had anything to show who she was and all he’d say was the bible verse. No photos or recordings; however now she’s holding one in her hands. 

Without looking at Charon, who’s been standing at the door, she pockets the holotape in the bag of her bandolier. Grabs the necklace, puts it over her neck, and tucks it under the shirt of her armored vault suit. She hesitates, but grabs the whiskey too. Then she moves back upstairs to continue her search. 

Searches nearly every nook and cranny of the memorial. Into the rotunda where another handful of tapes sits forgotten on some piece of machinery. 

Angrily she shoves them into her pip-boy. She listens, tape after tape after tape. Listening for something, _anything_ that will tell her where her father has gone now. 

The trail can’t just end here in the memorial.

Her father’s recorded voice tells her, “And as hard as it was to admit it, she doesn't need her daddy anymore.” The tape on her pip-boy finishes and Grace is suddenly aware of the tears streaming down her face. Her father is wrong. He’s family and you don’t ever stop needing family.

She kicks the machine. Kicks it again and again, till her foot hurts and the metal starts to dent. If Charon minds the outburst, he doesn’t show it. He says nothing as he watches her ruin a piece of equipment.

Her father could have – _should_ have – told her. Should have asked her to come with him, to see this project to its end. Her years of education in the vault, her G.O.A.T. results, and her years of programming and technical maintenance knowledge from Stanley; and she could have helped him if he’d just told her.

Instead he just left her. 

Abandoned her for a project that was more important than family. A project that would have been completed if she’d never been born, according to his tapes. A project he and Jonas still raised on the long nights he left her alone at home. “Work to do in the office,” he’d tell her and now she sees the work.

She stops, pain in her toes, and pulls herself together long enough to pull the last tape out, load it in and then just listens.


	4. Echoes of Tranquility

She pushes past the other pods in the vault, trips over her own feet on her way to him. Weeks and weeks of searching and he’s right there.

He was there too, watching her in silent horror. Watching from the playground as she ran about, from one bloody task to the next.

She knows the look on her face betrays what the simulation entailed. Just more blood on her hands in the search for him. Except their blood doesn’t exist, her hands are clean as she reaches out to hug him. The people in the pods around her are still alive; as computer terminals display vitals and life support. She knows they’re trapped in a simulation of Braun’s creation. Those people are still alive while she tries to confirm that this is her reality: her father, at long last, is standing right in front of her.

Except he doesn’t reach out to hug her back. She stops short at the scowl on his face and her arms slowly drop back to her sides. 

“You were supposed to stay in the Vault.” He says as a way of greeting. 

It’s the last thing she wants to hear. 

Weeks of fluctuating anger snap within her. “And you lied to me,” she snaps, stopping short of saying more when he flinches away. 

She sees the silent judgment. Who does he see, she wonders: his daughter or the pint-sized slasher? 

She doesn’t have time to debate the difference. He opens his mouth to continue and her whole world shatters again.

* * *

Grace watches as her father ascends the stairs, and stays rooted to the spot long after he has left her field of view. She can still feel the heat in her cheeks and the scratch in her throat from their shouting. She blinks several times because she refuses to cry now.

Butch always called her a cry baby. The wasteland apparently hasn’t beaten it out of her yet. 

Finally, when she hears the grating of the Vault door opening and closing again, she starts to move. She pulls the rifle off her back and then she speaks. 

“Kill the robobrains,” she tells Charon, securing a round into the chamber. 

She shoots the first robot, cerebral fluids and medigel leaking over two-hundred year circuits. The others immediately turn hostile, and together they go hunting. Together they exterminate every maintenance bot in the vault. When the last of the bots finally lays motionless, she retraces her steps and returns to the central chamber. 

Wordlessly, Grace begins pulling every wire from the pods; ignoring the blaring alarms when people begin to flat line. 

“I couldn’t figure out the program to override it in there, but at least they’re not Brawn’s puppets any longer.” She explains to Charon’s watchful silence. She could have wailed on the gnome and brick and glass all day, but she never had an ear for music.

Only one pod she doesn’t destroy, on the upper levels and safely tucked away in its own office. Her eyes burn, and there is nothing more that she would like to do than drag him out and make him look her in the eye as she kills him. It’s a thought that feels as foreign as her anger. Pure wrath in every fiber of her being she never would have considered herself capable of two months ago. 

Not before the wasteland.

Not before Tranquility Lane.

Instead she hacks his computer. “May you rot until this machine lets you die,” she hisses as she rewrites a piece of code. She rips away the only control of the simulation Braun has away. No more tropical islands or peaceful neighborhoods. After two hundred years of torture and manipulation, he can have a warzone and all it entails. He can walk his own wasteland until it finally claims him.

Besides her Charon watches as she types. If he disapproves, he does not voice the thought.

When she finishes she stalks away from the office, heavy footfalls kicking up dust on the vault floor. She leaves 112 a tomb; bodies left in their pods and robobrains left littered where they feel. They’re finally as dead as Braun originally ordered.

Back outside she heaves a heavy sigh; fresh air and afternoon sunlight. She half expected to see her father. She hoped that maybe he might have waited for her. Instead it seems he did not hesitate nor waste time in running back to Rivet City. Back to his project without her once again.

“I told you I wouldn’t always be there,” He’d said. The memory bringing back another surge of anger.

For a brief moment she regrets not pelting him with his holotapes. Each one a damn log about his precious project. Regrets not shaming him with her mother's voice, something withheld from her like so much else. 

She’d told him to go because she wanted space; wanted to put distance between them and the argument. After two months of nothing but space, and standing outside the Smith Casey Garage with nowhere else to go, she knows that space the last thing she needs.

She looks at the map on her wrist, looks at the eastern corner where she knows Rivet City stands. 

She might not need or want the space, but she does not want another argument so soon. She recognizes the resurgence of her anger, and knows that deep down it's because he planned to leave her from the very start. Left her with nothing but a holotape that Jonas was supposed to give her. He always planned to leave her for project Purity, his real kid, and damn if that doesn't hurt. 

She sighs again, looks around at the dilapidated gas station around her, and Charon standing at her side. She pulls the rifle from her back again and begins walking back up the road. She’ll figure it out, she always does.


	5. Wandering the Wastes

She walks from Vault 112 and the Smith Casey Garage, dirt dusted pavement with long dead grass in the cracks under her feet and stretched out for miles. Days pass by.

Where her path was once one of direction, it is now aimless. Grace wanders, losing herself in every distraction and ruin she comes across. She spends several hours clearing out a cave of Yao Guai, spends a day purging Evergreen Mills of raiders, and finally follows up on a lead at Jury Street metro station. 

She travels west and north mostly, avoiding DC and the memorial. Puts distance between herself and her father.

Most nights she barely sleeps. Her rifle and pistol are always close at hand regardless. 

Some nights, when sleep is most difficult, she traces her finger over the cross on the necklace she swiped from her father’s room in the memorial. Most times she is silent, but sometimes Charon can hear her whisper under her breath, “I am Alpha and Omega…”

Slowly several days turns into a week.

* * *

When she returns to Big Town, after wading into a supermutant infested police station, with Red and Shorty following closely behind she’s caught up in the sea of teenagers that emerge from the cluster of boarded homes. Each of them laughing and crying, crowding around in celebration of their friend’s safe return. 

It is not the only kindness she does for the day. 

The town is littered with robotic parts. She puts her vault education to use assembling a sentry bot, and instructs others to restore a protectron. She teaches them basic repair, how to restock the weapons on the bots, and even rewrites the code for the town’s protection. 

She hands Kimba a rifle she pulled off one of the mutants in the police station, it’s better than the BB-gun she carries. “Actual bullets will do more good than the plastic pellets”, she explains. She spends the late afternoon hours showing several residents how to field strip a gun, how to clean, care for, and repair the weaponry they have. 

“Why are you doing this?” Bittercup asks, “Why bother helping us?”

Grace pauses, blinks, and doesn’t know what to say. Shifts her feet, feels an itch on the back of her neck with all eyes on her. The silence settles in for a minute before she finally finds the words, “I don’t know." She fumbles with the slide in her hand, slots it back into place. "I guess I just don’t want to see you all wiped off the map.” 

“Well, I can't say I'm not grateful for that. It's already more than what most have ever wanted for us.” Shorty says, and others nod. 

Grace continues her lesson. Suddenly feeling odd with their eyes on her. _Why did I risk my neck for a town of strangers?_ She thinks about it for some time, among direction on gun repair, before settling on the thought that maybe she did it because they’re all about her age. 

They’re a settlement of teens. Teenagers originally from Little Lamplight and kicked out to Big Town when their older, or so Grace has been told. Perhaps it’s not so different from being kicked out of the Vault at the age of nineteen. No one helped her when she first stumbled into the light of day, like no one has helped them. Perhaps there is hope in them, she thinks. If they can survive, then she can too. 

When she finishes, she decides it is time to leave again. They say she's welcome to stay, but she can't. She can't sit still. She has no where to go and no where to be, but the open roads beckon. And she will answer their call.

Before she walks back across the bridge out of the town, a boy barely at her chin height wordlessly hands her an eight ball. She accepts the gift and puts it in her bandolier, in the pocket just below her holotapes. 

Then she’s on the road once more, Charon still at her side.

* * *

Several days pass since she left Big Town. Nothing of interest happens until she meets the mutant; one who speaks and carries no weapon. 

“I’m Uncle Leo,” the mutant explains.

He gives her a filthy pre-war business suit, a gesture of peace that she accepts from his outstretched hand as Charon keeps close watch a few inches away from her. She can feel his breathing, but doesn’t mind. His job is to protect her, as he keeps reminding her. 

She hasn’t made his job easy these past few weeks.

She wishes Uncle Leo well when they part ways. Hopes that he doesn’t end up at the bottom of a ditch. Then hopes that she at least doesn’t find him like that.

* * *

Her days of wandering turn into a month. Three-Dog has taken to calling her the “Wanderer”. She tolerates the news reports, but Charon catches her grimace each time he mentions her. 

She silences it at any mention of her father.


	6. The Outcasts

It starts one afternoon while tuning the radio. From the static comes a distress call: sector 7-B, Bailey’s Crossroads. She checks her map and sees that they are close. 

Bryan is already running across the bridge to the city. His aunt is expecting him, Grace knows and she doesn’t need to go in. It’s for the best; she’d rather not risk seeing her father. She already risked the possibility just finding Viera. 

She watches Rivet City security escort the boy through the doors. Her part in this is done. 

She marks the crossroads on her map. With a rifle in hand and Charon not far behind her, they go.

* * *

Among the ruins of the buildings they fight. With their backs against pillars that no longer support anything as their cover, they fire at a group of supermutants. The green-skinned mutants are worse than vermin, Grace thinks. They certainly emerge from old ruins like a colony of ants. Optimistically she thinks that at least these mutants can’t breathe fire. 

She takes aim with her rifle and makes a bullet bounce on a metal plated helmet. Mechanically her fingers move to reload and her eyes never leave the mutant running along the patchwork remains of what was once a second floor. 

She killed the queen, threw a plasma grenade onto the eggs, slaughtered every last ant in Grayditch and now there are none. She’d like to do the same with the mutants: find the queen and drop a few grenades into whatever hive they have. She’d even kill Dr. Lesko again if it meant stopping the problem at its source. 

She wonders if there even is a source for the supermutants as she puts another bullet into the green-skin’s skull. Pauses just long enough in the middle of a fire fight to watch the body tumble from the second floor to ground level. 

There’s some satisfaction in that at least.

* * *

The Outcasts are less than pleased with her arrival. They eye Charon with disgust from behind their power armor, weapons still in hand. Neither Charon nor Grace disarms. Several tense minutes of questioning pass them by before Defender Morrill orders his men to stand down. Not out of any respect or decency, but only because he takes an interest in the pip-boy strapped to her wrist.

Despite the less than great first meeting, she still rides the elevator down with them. Sibley she likes the least of all out of the Outcasts. The man remarks about her usefulness as though she is not there. 

Sibley eyes Charon for a moment and Grace can tell he chooses against voicing a thought. _So he's not a complete moron_ , she thinks. Charon is still a good head and shoulders above the man, even without armor. If a fight breaks out, her caps are on Charon. But together they are only two people, stuck in some basement, among a handful of fully armed Outcasts. Odds are against them and both of them know it.

With each passing person she meets she likes their group less and less. These people are nothing like Sarah Lyons and her pride, Grace realizes as she listens to McGraw outline a task for her. The man dangles some unknown reward in front of her while asking for help. 

But Grace knows what help looks like, and this isn't it. “So you don’t need my help, just my pip-boy. Which happens to be attached to me,” She cuts in. This is not help, it is a business deal.

“So you do have half a brain,” McGraw replies in turn. “Look, I won’t lie to you. It’s a heavy combat simulation with the safety protocols permanently disengaged. That means if you die in there, your body goes into massive cardiac arrest.” 

“I’ll try not to die,” Grace replies and then sneers, “I’d hate to be an inconvenience.” 

She suits up into what Scribe Olin hands her, then steps into the pod with Vault 112 at the front of her mind: Braun and Tranquility Lane biting at her nerves. She can see Charon standing close by as the machine starts to warm up, running through basic checks and subroutines. Through she doesn't find too much comfort in going in alone.

“Let’s hope you treat this one better than the last guy,” Sibley says and nothing in his tone eases her as her vision fades into the simulation.

* * *

_This is hell_ , Grace decides. _I’ve died and actually gone to hell._

She dances around the inferno unit. “For chairman Cheng,” the hologram cries before their body is dispersed into pixels around a mock effect of a laser rifle. The accents sound so artificial, rough and grainy against her ears. The Chinese they speak sounds worse: garbled, like it’s just as fake though Grace has nothing to actually compare it to.

Her heartbeat is ringing in her ears too as she chases after Sergeant Benjamin Montgomery. The explosives are set, she can bring down the pulse field now. She hopes that she’s actually almost done with this hellscape. 

She almost finds the hope funny as she runs. That she’ll trade the simulation’s hell for the reality of the wasteland. From one hellscape to another; at least she knows what to expect from the world outside the simulation. Invisible Chinese soldiers aren’t a threat out there.

Except the fight with General Jingwei isn’t a cake walk. The sword, electrified, sends shocks through her body more painful than everything else the simulation has thrown at her. 

Perhaps the pod is actually electrifying her. Killing her slowly like McGraw said it would. 

Or perhaps she died the moment she entered the pod and none of this matters, she thinks as the blade digs into her simulated body. It certainly feels real enough.

She swings the stock of the rifle into Jingwei’s face, sends him stumbling backwards just long enough to get a shot off. She can’t let him hit her again.

She stands with air burning in her chest, keeps the laser rifle help up long enough to pull the trigger again and again. The rifle feels heavier now and even in the simulation she can taste blood, neither is a good sign. 

She focuses on firing, barely bothers to aim as she pulls up the system’s VATS. A ridiculous program, she thinks as it tells her less than accurate probability. _The military used this garbage_ , she thinks with her finger tight around the trigger.

She shoots him enough that eventually even General Jingwei disappears in a spray of pixels, as the world around her freezes. 

It’s surreal, standing there as the only animated person among a sea of suspended motion. The sudden quiet nearly deafening. Even Montgomery is frozen, teeth bared, in the middle of a fire fight. 

Then the moment is over just as quickly as it arrived. General Chase materializes, hands her a field promotion and says the simulation is finally over.

* * *

Sibley is dead, blood pooling on the metal flooring, and her pistol is in her hand. Her reflexes are quicker than usual, perhaps the simulation was good for something after all. It’s a grim thought as she lowers the gun back to its holster.

Despite everything Protector McGraw still wants her to take her share. “When you’re done, get out,” he says without the usual bite as he goes to inspect Scribe Olin’s body. 

That at least she feels bad about even though it wasn’t one of her bullets. No matter how quick she becomes, it seems it’ll never be quite enough. 

She takes the stealth armor, nothing else, and leaves. Charon still walks close beside her, hand on her shoulder leading towards the exit. She lets him, her mind growing foggy as her footsteps echo on the metal flooring. Once inside, the elevator rises and it is a smooth, quiet ride. A long enough pause for Grace to finally feel her body’s fatigue from the simulation. 

She rubs her fingers at the corner of her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I really need a drink.”

“You already finished the whiskey,” Charon reminds her. 

She looks at the pip-boy, reminds herself where she is. It’s a bit of a walk, but she knows of a bar not terribly far.


	7. Running in Circles

_Grace wakes up to a mouthful of Amata’s hair. Together they are a tangle of limbs with Amata still sleeping with her back to Grace’s chest. One of her arms is pinned under Amata’s sleeping head, the other interlocked with Amata’s hand. The leg trapped between Amata’s knees has fallen asleep, but she dares not move for risk of disturbing her sleeping girlfriend._

_Her father worked another late night in the lab, must’ve skipped coming home or he would have woken her by now. The door to their quarters always creeks. Amata had convinced hers to let her spend the night under the guise of studying for one of Mr. Brotch’s tests. Neither really needed to clarify their study of anatomy, but it didn’t hurt to keep the knowledge fresh._

_The alarm clock hasn’t gone off on either of their pip-boys yet, the realization comes to Grace’s sleep addled mind. There’s still time to enjoy the morning. Time before class, before Vault responsibilities, and before dealing with the Tunnel Snakes: Butch in particular._

_For now she is warm in bed, snug against Amata’s sleeping form. She moves her neck to maneuver around the mouthful of hair, then resettles and closes her eyes to snooze on._

* * *

Grace wakes with a dry throat and dust in her nose. The air in the room is stale: hot with a touch of humidity. She’s on an old mattress she kicked a few skeletons off from. Overlooking the floor from her spot on the bed she can see a femur still sticking out, aged yellow bone and caked radioactive dust. 

Charon’s back is to her. Neither of them have moved from their halves of the bed.

Grace shifts, stretches, and reaches into her pack on the ground. Her fingers ghost along the fabric of the stealth armor she has yet to put on before finding what she’s really after. She pulls the water bottle out of the bag. It’s purified, so it won’t send her Geiger counter ticking. Slowly she sits up then unscrews the cap, takes a few mouthfuls, then secures the cap back on. Despite the desire to drink more, she knows she needs to ration it.

She wishes she had something stronger too, but that’s a thought a more rational part of her says is a warning sign. 

Looking over her shoulder she can see Charon still looks asleep. Though knowing him it won’t be for much longer. Across from her side of the bed Grace can see out between the boarded up window of the apartment they took shelter in. She can see the sunrise sweeping over the wastes. 

Her eyes are sore and her mind still groggy from lack of sleep. Anchorage and garbled Chinese still fresh in her mind, it’s no wonder it kept her up. Not much of an improvement from Tranquility lane. 

No one there to assure her it’s okay either. Not like Amata would’ve at least.

It’s been nearly three months since she last saw her. Since the day she fled the Vault to chase after her father. Briefly she wonders how her girlfriend is doing, how things have settled down from that night. Knowing the Vault, it probably all went back to normal within the week she left. 

She entertains the thought of a normal vault a moment longer until Charon starts to stir.

* * *

Together they walk, heading west, through heavy sun. Past the ghosts of neighborhoods, along cracked pavement, then across dirt and rock. Grace walks with a white knuckle grip around her rifle, her shoulders squared and head held high. Almost daring anyone with a decent scope.

Charon says nothing, eyeing the horizon for threats as they walk. He does not ask about the simulation nor comment on the events involving the Outcasts. He does not ask about the new armor she stuffed into her pack. He does not ask about her fitful night of sleep. He is a man of few words as he holds his shotgun with far less intensity than Grace.

They walk until their destination finally becomes clear when large metal walls loom in the distance: Megaton. The sun high in the sky by the time the reach the gates.

Grace leads through into the town, Charon not far behind her as they walk across the settlement. Up rickety metal stairs built from scrap, past leaking pipes, and a man who preaches the end of days. Neither pays the latter any mind.

Charon has known his employer for forty-eight days. He remembers her saying something about a house in the settlement. It is not their first stop, however, as Grace leads him to a place called “Moriarty’s Saloon”. A bar like any other in the wastes, by Charon’s standards, but the bartender he does recognize. One of Carol’s adopted children Ahzrukhal was not particularly fond of.

“Grace!” Gob says, “You’re back!”

“Hey Gob,” she replies. “A bottle of whatever doesn’t taste like it’s been distilled in one of Moriarty’s boots.” 

He eyes the amount of caps she hands him and nods, scooping them into his hands and depositing them into the register. The bandages around two of his fingers doesn’t escape her notice, but Grace keeps her mouth shut. Fresh from the vault she might have said something, now she’s seen worse. Been through and done worse too.

“Rough couple of weeks?” Gob asks, placing a bottle of clear liquid on the counter. 

Grace takes the bottle by the neck, inspects it. “Pretty much,” she replies. _Vodka_ , the hand printed label reads. Good enough for her.

“You find your dad yet?” He asks, continuing the light conversation as he starts to fetch her a glass.

Grace’s grip on the bottle tightens for a moment. Then she starts to work the cork out. “I did.”

It’s then that another man enters the bar, saunters over and takes a seat on a patchwork stool at the bar. Pulls out a cigarette, looks up mid-light and sees Grace. “If it isn’t the pampered vault asshole,” Jericho says by way of greeting. “Haven’t seen your face here in a while. Thought you bit the dust like everyone else outside the gate.”

She gives a low snort. “My favorite retired raider. Hello to you too, Jericho.” Grace replies, pulling the cork from the bottle. Doesn’t wait for Gob to hand her a glass before she takes a swig. Doesn’t break eye contact with the man.

It seems to be the right thing to do. Jericho just nods his head once in her direction, takes a drag of the freshly lit cigarette, and orders his usual. His drink of choice is an amber looking liquid.

Grace takes a seat herself with the bottle still in hand. She fishes another handful of caps from her pouch, and pushes them across the counter towards Gob. “For whatever Charon wants,” she explains. Looks over to him standing behind her and says, “Take a seat, I think we’re going to be here for awhile.”

“Got nothin’ better to do?” Jericho asks.

“Nope,” Grace replies as Charon takes the seat next to her, plants himself between her and the wall.

“Moriarty probably has some more charity work for you if you ask for it.”

Pointedly she says, “Fuck his charity.” Then takes another swig from the bottle.

* * *

The following morning Grace wakes in a bed that she owns, though she doesn’t recall how she exactly found her way to it. Charon probably, she figures around a pounding headache. The light bleeding through the cracks in the roof is too much. And the stuffy heated air within the metal walls is nearly unbearable.

She shifts and rolls over, puts her back to the wall and looks at the rusty furniture around the room.

It’s her house, though it doesn’t quite feel like it. Three months out of the vault and nowhere feels like home. The vault is the one that comes to mind first; not Megaton or the house that she’s only spent a handful of nights in. Three months in the wastes and it feels odd to her now, not barricading the door and sleeping so close to an open window.  
  
Somewhere downstairs she can hear Charon moving. Probably eating something in the kitchen. Her pip-boy light is blinding, but she can just make out the time. Somewhere close to a quarter to ten in the morning. 

She should probably get up. 

She doesn’t see much of a point though. Her head is pounding and there’s not a whole lot for her to do.

No where really for her to go either.

* * *

They restock in Craderside supply late in the afternoon the following day. Moira asks Grace about Mirelurks, and Grace assures her she’ll get around to it. Charon raises an eyebrow, but does not ask.

Grace buys every shotgun shell and .32 caliber ammo Moira has in stock. Then they’re out the door and walking towards the city gates. Once past the gate, they fall into their usual stride: Guns out, safety off. 

For the most part the walk is uneventful. Back up the same road they traveled earlier on their way to Megaton. The divergence comes when Grace leads into the metro tunnels.


	8. Only One Survives

With Charon at her side, they spend the better part of a day clearing a path through the old metro tunnels. They kill raiders, mole rats, the occasional feral. She knows she’s close to her destination when the briny smell of irradiated water reaches her nose in the tunnels. Climbs out into the light of day from Anacosta Crossing to see Rivet City still sitting in the bay. 

The marketplace is her first stop as she restocks on ammo. Bryan and his aunt stop to say hello while she barters over armor repairs with Seagrave. It’s good to see the boy looking better than he did in Greyditch.

Then she asks where Doctor Li can be found. She gets her answer and then exits the market, descends down the ship towards the science lab. Outside the door she braces herself. Squares her shoulders and her hands ball into white knuckled fists at her side. Anything to put off seeing her father again.  
  
But she can’t just wander forever.

She inhales a long breath, then opens the heavy metal door.

* * *

She watches him work at the Purifier; scribbling calculations on a clipboard that probably hasn’t been picked up in as long as she is old. 

She hasn’t apologized and won’t until he does first.

He wasn’t exactly thrilled to see her in the science lab, but couldn’t exactly turn her help away either. He was quick enough to send her out to clear out the memorial of mutants for a second time. Not that he thanked her for that. 

Not that she’s looking for his thanks either.

She said she’s willing to help, not be ordered around like a child. Working on Project Purity makes her feel like a child again, sitting in the clinic with him sitting at the desk chiding her to “don’t touch” anything. So far they’ve trusted her with a flood control button, and now a handful of fuses.

“I’ve heard about what you’ve been up to on the radio.” Her father says without looking up from his calculation. 

She can hear the judgment in his tone. Thinks of Vault 112, but settles for saying, “What’s Three Dog saying now?” She might as well tell him the truth and not whatever tales Three Dog is spinning these days.

“That you diffused the Megaton bomb. A dangerous thing to do, I wish you wouldn’t put yourself in harms way like that.” 

She doesn’t need his lecture and rolls her eyes. “I’ve done shit far more dangerous than that, Dad.” 

He finally looks up at her. Maybe it was something in her tone, but the darkness in his gaze tells her that he remembers Tranquility Lane and probably wonders if the danger she’s refereed to is along those lines. 

She’s no raider, but the blood on her hands these days is enough to qualify. 

For a second she wonders if her father knew what he was doing when he gave her that BB gun on her birthday nearly a decade ago. Momentarily wonders why he even gave her a gun if he expected her to stay in the Vault. 

Born in the Vault, Die in the Vault. Except she wasn’t born there and now she won’t even die there. The thought is enough to slightly curl the edges of her lips. 

But the silence between them stretches on; a challenge to reopen the wound from the 112, she thinks. She won’t apologize. That much she’s settled on.

“The wastes can be tough”, is all she gives. She turns her back to him, goes to grab the stupid fuses from the table. She owes no explanation, not when her father left her without a word. Not that he’s now ordering her around on stupid errands when she could be doing something more with her own technical knowledge. At least be considered more than just firepower and menial labor.

However, when he finally speaks, his words surprise her. “I just want to say that I’m proud of you,” he says. It isn’t an apology, he hasn’t made up for the months of searching and wandering, but she’s thankful her back is to him as moisture fills the corners of her eyes. She blinks quickly to stop it from spilling over.

_He’s still proud of me_. The thought repeats in her head.

“You’re a good person, it shows. It’s not easy to be that way outside of the Vault.” 

“Whatever,” she says, forcing words past the sudden lump in her throat. “I’ll go fix your stupid water pump,” she says. She marches out of the rotunda with a fist full of fuses.  
  
She doesn’t look back.

* * *

The next time she sees him, she’s pounding on the glass door with the butt of her rifle. The thick glass won’t even crack as she hits it again and again and again. The wood of the stock is splintering though. Not enough duct tape to fix that. But that’s not her concern right now.

He’s staggering towards her as she scrams herself hoarse. Her Geiger counter screams in tandem at her wrist. Radiation climbing higher and higher. It’ll probably kill her soon too if she doesn’t leave. But she can’t without him.

“Run” he says, supporting himself on the glass.

“No, no! I can’t!” she screams, tears burning her vision. All her bottled anger lost in an instant. “I can’t leave you.”

“Grace, honey, you have to run,” he struggles to say. His eyes aren’t focusing on her anymore.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Dad.” she says. Apologizing first because a vain hope tells her that he won’t leave her with so much left to say.

And then her father’s on the floor and she’s just standing there, choking on tears.

Somewhere in the background she hears Dr. Li yelling too. She’s pulling on her arm and saying that he’s gone and to move. But Grace can’t pull her eyes away from her father just lying there on the ground.

A loud smack and a sting across her face pulls her back. Enough so that she’s suddenly aware of the rest of the chaos around her. Alarms she couldn’t hear over her own shouting.

Charon has a grip on Li’s arm for the offensive slap, but Grace absently tells him to let her go. 

“We need to go,” Charon echoes beside her, an unspoken look of sympathy on his face. But he is firm in steering her away from the danger. Her safety is his priority above everything else while her world erupts into chaos again.

He takes her arm and she allows him to pull her away from the glass - away from the _body_. She allows herself to be led to the sewer as she struggles to regain control and Dr. Li starts barking orders at her.

Orders she follows because she can at least solve them with her gun. She pulls the pistol from her belt.

* * *

The Citadel buzzes with a sense of urgency. People move to action as plans to take the Purifier back from the Enclave get under way. Somewhere else Dr. Li and Elder Lyons bicker back and forth about the best way to deal with the Enclave’s Tesla barrier.

Grace is not there to hear them hash out the details of whatever plan they’re making. She’s sitting on the couch in the Lyon’s Den. It’s quieter than the courtyard at least. 

“Here,” Sarah Lyons says as she holds a Nuka Cola in her outstretched hands. 

Grace accepts it with numb fingers. “Thanks,” she offers dully. Doesn’t have the energy to say much else. Certainly doesn’t request anything stronger, doesn’t trust herself enough to drink at the moment. No matter how badly she’d like to.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father. I’ve been told he was a great man.” Sarah says. “You should be proud of him.” 

_Proud of him_ , the thought echoes. _He was saying he was proud of me, and I watched him die._

“Get some rest,” Sarah offers. Puts her hand on Grace’s shoulder and gives a light squeeze. Reassuring and oddly comforting. Then she stands, exits, and Grace is alone again.

Truly alone now.

Charon is in the infirmary, being treated for a nasty plasma burn that kissed his arms. A blast he took in her place because she couldn't get herself together fast enough. _My fault_ , she knows. Like so much else. 

She can’t even cry. It seems she cried herself out in the rotunda.

She broke the rifle, her thoughts drift back. She’ll need a replacement if she’s going to go after the Enclave. Because she is going to go after the Enclave.  
  
Her knuckles go white around the grip on the rosary beads around her neck. The chain and cross digging into her palm.  
  
She’s going to make them pay.


	9. Way Back Home

A voice that she would recognize anywhere, the one that she still hears in her dreams, calls her name. “Grace!” Seeing her, Amata rushes across the room and flings her arms around her neck. Grace hugs her back, nearly holding her for dear life. “Oh my God, you’re back! You got my message and actually came back!”

“I came as soon as I heard you were in trouble.” Grace replies. It’s the truth, when the radio signal appeared on her pip-boy just outside Megaton she left Charon at the settlement’s gates and went running through Springvale. Back up the cliff side and into the cave where her original footprints were still preserved. The message had looped three times in the time it took her to reach the Vault door. 

Of course she remembered her girlfriend’s name. How could Amata ever think she would’ve forgotten it?

She never expected the Vault to be in such a state of chaos. At first she almost didn’t believe all the details from Officer Gomez, but the scene with Officer Taylor and Freddie Gomez had suddenly put things into perspective. But more than running into the familiar faces and seeing Butch in the hallway, seeing Amata is everything she did and didn’t even know she needed. 

Pulling herself from the embrace, Amata suddenly becomes more serious. Gets a better look at Grace and is suddenly aware of the dirt and grime on the armored vault suit. “You cut your hair,” she says and Grace offers an awkward smile. 

Then she explains the situation.

* * *

Grace turns a sharp corner at the end of a hallway and she sees the door to home. The name plate that once read “Rivera Residence” now features several angry lines in the metal. As though someone took a blade to it in a fit of anger.

Grace traces her fingers over the marks first, then attempts to trace the lettering. She opens the door and breath catches in her throat at the sight of the ransacked room. Remembers to breathe, and then walks into the mess. Her fingers ghosting the outline of broken furniture as she passes. 

_The couch was there_ , she thinks. The tables, the chairs, the lamp. Now it’s all out of place, flipped and tossed and mostly broken. The place she spent her first nineteen years in is almost unrecognizable.

When her boots crunch on broken glass, she pauses and looks down in surprise. It’s an old framed photograph, and bending to retrieve it she sees that it’s the one from her tenth birthday. Black and white, but her Father still looks younger with a head of black hair instead of the grey. She’s wearing the ridiculous baseball cap that Staneley gave her.  
  
Wordlessly, she removes the photo from the cracked frame. Careful not to damage it or cut herself on the glass. She folds it and sticks it in the pocket of her suit, next to the “Better Days” holotape. She gives the room – her home – just one more look, then turns and walks out. 

She has an Overseer to talk to.

* * *

“It’s hard to forgive what he’s done, but I suppose I can understand why he did it. I’m glad you brought him to his senses.” Amata says at the news of her Father’s resignation. “But now there’s a new Overseer in charge! And I’m planning on opening the Vault, this time for good. It’s a bright new day for the Vault, but I’m afraid there’s one thing that has to change.” She’s holding Grace’s hand and finally things feel right.

“Whatever it is, I’m glad to help.” Grace says. Her girlfriend’s the Overseer, things will finally go back to normal in the Vault.

“Please, if you really want to help the Vault, you have to go.” Amata says. 

The words, like knives, stab into Grace’s chest. “What?” She asks, puzzled. Like her world is crashing down all over again. “I don’t understand, Amata. I sorted this whole mess out for you, and you’re kicking me out?”

“You upset things when you’re here, Grace.” Amata replies apologetically, then continues on. “It’ll be awhile before we’re actually ready to go outside, but once the Vault is stable again, maybe we’ll see you out there. So this is just goodbye for now.” Her hand slips from Grace’s. “But with luck, we’ll meet again.” 

“I –“ Grace starts but the words catch in her throat. She can already feel the corners of her eyes beginning to well up. She swallows, blinks, holds it all back. “I came back for you. I’ve thought of you every day since I left. And you – you’re kicking me back out? After everything?” 

“It’s not like that, its –“ Amata says with her hand once again reaching out, but Grace recoils. She of all people will not be the one to hurt her, not after everything she’s done. She steels herself, though feels the sinking pain in her chest at the last betrayal. 

“I’m sorry. You’re a hero, but you need to leave.” Amata finally says. She doesn’t even look at Grace as the words fall from her lips. A hand from Susie falls on her shoulder and Amata reaches up to grab that instead. Runs her thumb over the back of Susie’s hand, like she used to with Grace’s.

Grace can see what has happened between them. She left the Vault little more than three months ago and she’s already been replaced. She’s good enough to come in to clean up the mess Amata couldn’t fix, but not good enough to get the truth. It’s easier to kick her back out. 

Grace turns on her heel, storms back out of the clinic. Doesn’t say goodbye.

“Grace!” Amata calls after her, but she does not stop. Not this time.

And that’s it. Nineteen years, a lifetime, and she’s nobody now. Long nights awake past curfew, sleepovers, birthdays, raiding the overseer’s liquor cabinet, harebrained schemes, late nights running fingers through each other’s hair, and a shared first kiss: and now none of it matters. 

“Good riddance, get out.” Freddie Gomez sneers as she passes. 

Butch says nothing, just watches as she walks from the room and out of view down the hall. Even his silence hurts, he always had something to say whether or not she wanted to hear it.

She leaves the Vault for the last time. Behind her she can hear the metal door slotting back into place. She does not look back this time, instead pushing onward and back out into the Capital Wasteland. 

_I'm such a fool_ , she thinks as she begins walking back to Megaton. She went running back to the Vault as soon as she heard the broadcast. Like a child running home to it's mother's call. And for what? For the woman she loved, who she thought still loved her back, only to find out she was never wanted back to begin with.

Walking through Springvale she wipes her eyes. No more crying, she'd promised herself. She sees how well it's all worked out again.

She puts three bullets into the Eyebot broadcasting Eden's words as she passes it on the street. _Stupid Enclave_

She still has a G.E.C.K. to find after all. 


	10. Bar-stools and Familiar Faces

Charon’s hand lands hard on her shoulder, holding her back. He thinks of 112, of Bailey’s Crossroads, and Greyditch. He has seen her angry, with blood in her mouth and a gun in her hand. He has never thought of her as more dangerous than he does now.

“Not here,” he warns with a room of eyes upon them both. He knows her, knows she is dangerous and that both of them are more than capable of laying waste to this place. But they are vastly outnumbered and the risk is not worth it. 

She realizes it too, as her fingers slowly uncurl from the man’s neck. A hundred ways to kill him still buzz within her head. _He fucking used me_ , her innermost thoughts snarl. He killed everyone in the tower and that was not part of the plan. 

They might’ve been rich, pompous ass holes, but they didn’t deserve to be rotting in the tower’s basement. That was never her intent.

But Roy can’t keep his mouth shut. “Yeah, always did like a smoothskin that knows their place.” 

It’s the wrong thing to say. Before Charon can intervene, she strikes him: viper fast. Her knuckles connecting with his jaw in a sickening crunch. He stagers back from the blow, blood slipping past the fingers cradling his jaw.

Charon acts, forcefully shoving Grace behind him and placing himself between them. She stumbles momentarily, catches herself with a few steps, and does not stop glaring daggers at Roy. Her hands ball up into fists. She can feel her finger nails dig into the mask of stitched together skin: her reward for peacefully negotiating a slaughter.

For a moment Charon is afraid that the man will try to retaliate, raise a hand to his employer. Then they will have to fight their way out of the tower. 

But for some reason Roy can tell that this is not a fight he wants to pick. Instead he yells for them to leave. 

They exit swiftly and Grace does not look back when the metal gates slam shut behind her. Instead she walks to the nearest tree and punches the long dead wood. Blow after blow; until her knuckles are dripping. And she screams.

She screams her grief and guilt into the midafternoon air as blood drips down from her knuckles.

* * *

Grace hasn’t moved from the bar stool in four hours. It’s not even noon yet. Belle is pulling another bottle of something stronger out while Brock is giving her an unrelenting look. Probably waiting for the first sign of trouble: the first hint that she’s had too much or some sign that she’s about to start shit like any other drunken client. 

_Fuck them both_. She thinks while slapping more caps onto the counter and taking the bottle by the neck from Belle’s outstretched hand. The Muddy Rudder is a piece of shit bar, but she hasn’t found one in the whole of the capital wasteland that suits her yet. They all seem to stink of the same piss and grime, but a bottle is a bottle and for now it suits her just fine.

The music from her wrist is blaring. It’s a haunting violin piece and she wonders if it’s from the sheet music she pulled out of 92 along with the old Stradivarius. Back before everything went to shit: when her biggest worry was just finding Vault 112 and hoping she could still find her father. 

Or perhaps it’s one of the other pieces Agatha knows. Something she used to play on the old violin before Grace came along and stumbled into her little hut.

Either way it’s better than whatever Three Dog has to say about Tenpenny Tower.

Charon is resupplying in the market place. It’s what she told him to do. She brings the bottle to her lips and takes another mouthful, quick and rushing down the back of her throat. 

Truth is she just wanted to get drunk without his ever watchful eyes disapproving. 

Slowly someone takes the seat next to her, orders a round of whatever she’s drinking. It’s enough to make her curious. It’s enough to make her look over and see a face she never expected to see again look back at her: Butch.

“Jesus. You look in a mirror lately?” He says. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“I haven’t,” she replies pointedly while taking another large gulp from the bottle. She ignores the burn as she swallows. “What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like, nosebleed? I’m ordering a drink.” Butch replies, as Belle slides him a glass.

“Amata send your ass packing too?” Grace asks. 

She must’ve slurred a bit, or something showed in her voice, for Butch’s eyebrows raise in response. “No.” He sips the drink, his eyes going wider still before he swallows. “Holy shit that’s strong. This is what you’re drinking?”

“Can’t handle it?” Grace replies. She takes another gulp for emphasis. A direct challenge that Butch meets by taking another, although smaller, sip. The silence grows between them as they drink. She hears Agatha’s song quicken: the pitch and frequency of the notes climbing sharper and sharper. 

Hours pass, they order lunch. The Muddy Rudder special of the day is overcooked brahmin; tough to chew and flavorless. Grace suspects it's reheated leftovers from the previous day's roast. Not that she's complaining or picky. The meal is filling and she's had enough lean days since leaving the Vault the first time to appreciate food when its in front of her.

There were lean days in the Vault too. On the days Butch bullied the ration tickets from her hands at the diner.

Sometime after Belle takes their plates Butch asks, “Did you ever find your Dad?”

Like a flinch, Grace can feel her fingers tighten around the neck of the amber bottle. “He’s dead.”

“Aw Jesus, I-” Butch stammers, though she’s quick to interrupt.

“It’s fine.” The words pass her lips and she knows there’s nothing farther from the truth. _I watched him die_ , the thought haunts her from the bottom of the bottle. If she gets there, maybe it’ll go away. Probably not a healthy thought but her fath- _he_ isn’t here to remind her of that.

“No one bothered to ask when I went back to sort out the Overseer pissing contest.” She continues. Butch actually laughs.

“Sorry,” he says. He actually sounds sincere. “I should’ve asked when I saw you in the hallway.” 

She takes another mouthful. “Whatever. Everyone else had their heads full of their own shit in that bubble of a Vault to care to ask either.”

“Amata isn’t half bad, you know? She’s better than her father was at least.” 

“Great,” she replies dryly. “So why are you here and not there?”

“Jeez you’re moody when you drink. I thought you might like to know your girlfriend is –“

“EX,” Grace snaps. “Ex-girlfriend.”

She’s far from sober. She’s toeing the line between where her brain is cloudy enough to maybe enjoy the shitty alcohol, and the place where it says “fuck it” and starts to shut down. Right now Butch is ruining that cloudy middle ground.

“Why are you here?” she asks again.

“I figured there was more out here for me than just being a barber.” He replies, looking into his glass.

“There’s nothing out here, Butch. Go back to the Vault.” She does not call it home. She does not say that there is only sadness and bitterness waiting in the wastes. She does not tell him about the Enclave or about the G.E.C.K. she should be looking for while she sits in the Muddy Rudder drinking away her problems.

There’s plenty she doesn’t say, but Butch seems to read it on her anyway. "I'm better off out here. No ration tickets to worry about, just caps."

"Two things to worry about keeping enough of in your pockets: Caps and bullets." Grace says. "It's a long way from the Vault to Rivet City."

"I can handle myself. Always have, always will." Butch replies. They fall back into silence. The violin plays, until it doesn't. Agatha signs off and the radio goes dead for the night. 

They're two kids from 101 drinking life away in a bar.

* * *

He watches her zip the jumpsuit back up. From his spot on the bed Butch asks, “When was the last time you cut your hair?” 

“Awhile ago. Why?” she replies, starting to fumble with her belts and the bandolier. Takes her longer than it usually does, but the room is too damn bright for her brain to process anything correctly.

“It looks like a mole rat nest.” Butch replies. Over her laugher he continues, “I’m serious. At least let me cut it for you before you go.” 

“Like I’ll let you anywhere near my head with sharp objects. We’re both hungover,” she replies. 

“Can’t look worse than it already does.” He replies, standing up awkwardly from the bed and shakily walking a few steps. He pulls away a chair from the table and gestures for her to sit. 

Despite the momentary better judgement, she’s already walking over. “Just shave it.”

“I’m not sending you out there bald. I have a reputation, you know.” 

“I thought you didn’t want to be a barber anymore,” Grace says, taking a seat.

On the table he lays out the scissors and combs. “For someone with a hangover, you sure do talk a lot. Just let me work, alright nosebleed.”


	11. Town of Children

It’s a long trek and though Grace finds herself caught up in distractions eventually she reaches Little Lamplight. Together, with Charon following closely behind, they creep carefully into the tunnels lit with a string of fairy lights. 

Grace sees the child standing guard above the gate before he sees them. Like a toy soldier the boy is fitted in mock army fatigues, complete with a helmet. He’s armed too, with a rifle that looks far too large for his tiny build. Grace sees him and visibly pales in the low light of the cavern.

_He’s a baby_ , the thought strikes her. She holsters her own gun, signals to Charon to do the same, and then steps forward into the light. Her hands raised and empty as the boy jumps, surprised by her sudden appearance.

“Hold it right there, lady,” the boy says. Though initially startled, he still draws his gun with a swift ease that suggests far too frequent practice. Unlike the people at Big Town, this child is familiar with the gun in his hands. The thought sits uneasy in Grace’s stomach. “One more step and I blow your fucking head off.”

“I rather like my head,” Grace says.

“Then you better go out the way you came in,” the boy replies. The line of his sight never leaves Grace. Even with Charon in her company, the boy has chosen her as the bigger threat. 

“I need to get to Vault 87,” Grace explains. “I heard there’s a way in through here.” Time to see if the Brotherhood Scribes are worth listening to at all.

The information is enough to give the boy pause, though the gun remains trained on her. “Yeah? Well, even if I felt like letting you in – which I don’t – you wouldn’t want to go there. That’s where the monsters are.” 

Carefully, Grace lowers her hands. Points to the assault carbine on her back. “That’s great. I happen to be an expert monster killer.” 

The boy snorts. “Yeah right. That’s something a mungo would say.” 

“What’s a mungo?” Grace asks. “Look, can you let me in? I just need to get to the Vault. I won’t cause trouble. I’ll even pinky swear.”

“Hell no, no mungos allowed.” The boy snaps back. “You mungos are nothing but trouble. I ain’t gonna let what happened to Sammy or Squirrel happen to anyone else here.”

“What happened to Sammy and Squirrel?” Grace asks. Already she is sure she will not like the answer.

The boy’s expression darkens. “Them and Penny got themselves caught by slavers from Paradise Falls.”

Grace can feel her own anger begin to bubble under the surface on his behalf. “I’ll get your friends back.”

* * *

Grace returns after a week. When she reenters the caverns it is with three children, a dog, and Charon behind her.

It feels like Big Town again, as the boy at the gate cheers at the sight of his friends. He calls over his shoulder, there is a chorus of other high-pitched cheers, and the gate opens.  
  
The boy even allows Grace, Charon, and their new dog inside. Past the gate a swarm of children rush to greet their three returning friends; the long lost scav team they had lost hope on. 

The boy, MacCready, doesn’t ask how she did it. Grace doesn’t explain that she slaughtered the settlement of raiders and slavers. She doesn’t need to rehash the details of how she and Charon cleared them out with several clips of bullets and pulled grenade pins. How she turned Paradise Falls' bottle neck against it's inhabitants.

She doesn't say she sent Eulogy Jones over the railing of his own balcony; or that she slapped a collar on Forty and left him locked in "the box". She doesn't say how she left each and every one of their bodies out to rot, for wasteland scavengers to pick over the remains. How she walked in and out of Paradise Falls like a force of wrath herself. _It's what they deserve_ , she thinks grimly to herself. Because she's not the same Grace who left Vault 101 the first time nearly five months ago.

Instead she watches the group of children, cheering and happy to be reunited and home at last. Off to the side she notices another child, somewhere in his teens, who looks on with a halfhearted smile. A cross between happiness and some sadness Grace is not aware of as he fidgets with a birthday hat on his head. 

But that’s not what she’s here for. “Is there a way to the Vault?” she asks the mayor of the children.

“The only way in is Murder Pass. That's where the monsters try to come through. There's another door though. It’s probably safer, but the terminal's busted. Even Joseph can't get it to work."

It doesn't matter. Though Grace is confident she could get the computer working once more, she knows that she wouldn’t have chosen that path anyway.

They are children—a settlement of children—and she will not leave them with the threat of Murder Pass in their own backyards. 

Her father put a BB-gun in her hands at the age of 10. The children of Little Lamplight should not know how to use rifles twice their size because no adult ever thought to care enough about them.


	12. Raven Rock

She’s wearing the stealth armor, but there is nothing stealthy about the way she runs down the halls. A blind panic sprint as she tries to find the exit. 

Grace is running through the corridors of Raven Rock as the Enclave tears itself apart. Everything around her erupting into blood and sparking circuitry as everyone rains a downpour of bullets upon themselves. The security systems – turrets and sentry bots – turn against the armored soldiers they once protected. The hallways are swarming: Enclave laser and plasma firing in all directions and mingling with the spent shell casings as the security catches everyone off guard. 

Somewhere nearby she hears an explosion: a loose grenade or the signal that her countdown is over, she doesn’t know. She sure as hell doesn’t stop to figure it out either. 

She is running. Her breaths painful in her lungs as she tears ass through the corridors and through the chaos. If the remaining and surviving Enclave soldiers notice her, she doesn’t care. They can try to pick fights all they want, but Grace does not bother to pull a weapon that will just slow her down.

Raven Rock is erupting into fire somewhere behind her and Grace needs to get out. Needs to find the exit as quickly as she possibly can because her time has just about run out.

Her pack bangs against her back; jostled by her mad running. The short stops and pivot turns as she tries to navigate a way out of this hell hole. It’s added weight and she’s _this_ close to dropping it before she finally sees the doors. The first one, and then it’s twin.

Grace nearly rams into the second heavy metal door. Puts her hands out before she makes contact, then pushes to speed up the process of it’s opening: metal hinges groaning in complaint. As soon as she can squeeze herself through, she bursts out into the hazy sunshine of the midafternoon. She does not stop running. A pure, primal instinct to get away from the danger as quickly as she can pushing her onward. Even though she feels like her lungs will collapse at any second.

She can see the Vertibirds – hear the rapid spin of their propellers – as they take to the sky. Grace watches them leave, and makes it another couple of sprinted steps before the base behind her explodes.

Raven Rock erupts into a fiery display of light, one that Grace slows to watch. Her sprint transitioning into a jog. She makes it ten more steps before everything catches up to her. The thudding of her heart, her burning winded breathing, and the searing pain in the back of her legs. 

Adrenaline is one hell of a drug. 

She pushes onward even though the most immediate threat is behind her, she knows she’s not out of the woods yet. Somewhere nearby she can hear the rapid thumping and hum of a Gatling. 

Over the slope of the ground is a super mutant, mowing down the remaining Enclave with a spray of laser rounds. A familiar mutant wearing the ragged remains of a blue jumpsuit she can recognize just about anywhere. After all, she’s the one who hacked him out of that room in 87.

When the last of the Enclave are dead she calls out to him. “Fawkes!” 

He turns, sees her, and lowers the gun. “My friend! I have found you at last!” A large green hand raises to wave while the barrel of the Gatling points to the dirt. Where bodies have fallen on the patches of dead yellowed grass, freshly stained with Enclave blood. 

All too familiar with the sight by now, Grace pays the bodies no mind as she approaches the mutant. 

“I knew you survived!” Fawkes gives her a grin that is all teeth. 

“I did.” She says, still slightly breathless. She doesn't know how she did, but she did. She turns to look at the now smoking ruins of Raven Rock. Smoke, blood, and ozone from energy cells hanging heavy in the air around her. She always makes it out somehow. 

Eden is dead: officially offline. There’s still the matter of the vial of FEV in her pack, but hopefully the Brotherhood will take care of it for her. Hopes that they won’t just leave that up to her as well. Hell if she knows how to dispose of such a substance so that it won’t be kicking everyone’s ass for generations to come. 

However, there’s still the matter of Autumn to take care of. Fucking Colonel Agustus Autumn. There’s a million things she’d like to do to him. Make him bleed and pay for taking her father from her for starters. She’ll kill him, make sure he’s dead this time too.

“Where shall you go now?” Fawkes asks, pulling Grace back from her own thoughts. For a split second she feels guilty for allowing the grim and gruesome details to distract from whatever it is he said. 

“I need to go to the Citadel.” She tells him. To the Brotherhood and Sarah. 

That should be priority number one, but she wants to go back to Vault 87. She doesn’t know what happened to Charon. Did he get caught in Autumn’s stupid ambush too? Did they kill him, leave his body to rot with the rest of the supermutants she slaughtered to recover the G.E.C.K? 

Is he alive? Or did she just lead him to his death? Somewhere his contract sits in her pack and the question haunts her. 

She wants to find him and Dogmeat first. Either to recover the bodies and pay the due respects or to just see them again. But judging by the map on her pip-boy, it’s several days journey to the Citadel and Autumn has quite the head start on her. He'll figure out the code eventually. 

She looks to Fawkes. “Do you know if my friends survived 87 too?”

“Yes,” he says and relief washes over her. “He said he would wait for your return. The dog followed as well.” 

_Probably to Megaton_ , she thinks. She hopes so at least. She doesn’t know where else he would have gone. _They'll wait for me_ , she thinks - hopes - because it's time to finish this. No more living under the shadow of the Enclave. This time she'll stop the last of them, take back her parent's legacy and set things right.

She'll see the dream both her parents died for fulfilled, even if it kills her too. She feels she owes them that at least. They both sacrificed to bring her into this world. She got to grow up because of them, not many can say the same.

"Thank you, Fawkes." She tells him. She turns and then takes a few steps, the first of her long trek back to the Brotherhood. She doesn't ask him to come along. The Brotherhood certainly won't appreciate him walking her shadow and she won't make him tolerate their attitude on her behalf. They've saved each other, they're even.

From behind her she hears, "I wish you luck in your quest, my friend."

She smiles lightly. "Go try Underworld, you might like the people there," she calls over her shoulder. "It's in the American History Museum in downtown." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "She got to grow up because of them, not many can say the same." Is inspired by a quotation from Saga Issue #1, the Image Comic written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples. Original quote, spoken by narrator Hazel: "...but thanks to these two, at least I get to grow old. Not everybody does."


	13. Regrouped, Reloaded

She storms into the Rotunda, using the armor to shoulder her way through the door. There is only one single target in her mind. Her parent’s legacy, the thing they both died for: it’s time to take it back. She will fight – _has_ fought, bloody tooth and nail for it already. Clearing a path from the Citadel to the memorial with the whole Pride at her back with their towering, bomb throwing robot. 

Their insignia is on her chest: Brotherhood power armor at it’s finest.

“You again,” Autumn practically drawls. He stands on the catwalk, two soldiers at his sides, and his gun held loosely in his hand. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You seem hell-bent on destroying everything our government has worked to achieve.” He looks comfortable, lazy even. Almost like this whole exchange is an inconvenience and not a teetering on the edge of a knife: tension so thick in the air and about to erupt into a fire fight.

Knuckles go white around her pistol. “You’ve already lost, Autumn,” Grace snarls. Blood lust and vengeance dangling in front of her eyes, just within her reach. So close at hand and hanging so think in the air that she can almost taste her own victory.

Autumn snorts. “I beg to differ. The Enclave is at the height of its power.” 

“Raven Rock is gone. Eden is done: offline and checked out. You have nothing left.” She says like she can’t stop herself. _Why bother talking to him?_ The thought suddenly comes to her.

But Sarah Lyons, standing right behind her, hasn’t moved; and the two soldiers at Autumn’s sides haven’t even raised their rifles yet. It’s like Autumn and her are the only two in the room.

“The American people are worth fighting for,” Autumn says. He looks at her with a smug grin across his lips. Almost as if to say: How could a child understand such a thing, something so much larger than herself? 

She’s going to wipe that look off his face. Make him regret everything he’s done. It only seems fitting that he’ll die in the same room he killed her father in. Her father’s life’s work: clean water for all. She understands more than what he gives her credit for. He’s not the first to make that mistake either.

“The future – our future – must be secured, and I won’t let you stand in the way of that.” Autumn says, finishing his monologue.

“You know what?” Grace says, teeth bared and gun arm rising faster than anyone else can react. “Screw this!” 

She shoots first. The bullet embeds itself into the armored jacket protecting Autumn. She charges, rushing up the steps to close the distance between them. 

Behind her and all around her, guns fire. She doesn’t pay the other Enclave soldiers a thought, Sarah has her back. And the Pride’s armor should be enough to keep her alive long enough to kill Autumn at least. 

She uses her momentum, the speed of sprinting up the steps, and crashes right into Autumn. The power armor’s weight knocking him off balance. It’s enough of a distraction for her to swing the butt of her pistol to Autumn’s unarmored face. She can feel the bone in his nose give as he goes stumbling backwards into the railing. 

Grace is not that strong, but the armor is. She welcomes the mechanical assistance in beating-in his skull. She screams “Murderer!” She strikes him again before he recovers from the first blow. Again and _again_. The gunfire sounds so distant.

Till finally Autumn is on his ass: one arm frantic to cover his face, the other gripping the railing of the walkway. Grace pauses, her breath coming in angry huffs as she looks at him. His face is swelling, his nose and mouth freely drip blood. His eyes don’t focus on her as his raised arm shakes and his head lolls to the side, looking up somewhere past her.

“Murderer?” Autumn spits weekly. He laughs, more a wheeze but it’s like dropping a gas canister on her banking fires. “What does that make you?” 

“You killed my father!” She screams, the rage clawing free from the back of her throat. The same rage she wanted to scream at Braun. 

“You think one man is worth everyone else? You’d trade the whole world for one man?” 

“He was to me!” She strikes him again, just her armored fist. The same viper swing as when she punched Roy Phillips. 

Her father left her – _abandoned_ her – and she’ll never know if he was ever going to apologize. She’ll never know what they could have accomplished. She’ll never know what could’ve been: Because Autumn took it all away.

“There are needs greater than just yours. Even mine,” he says as he still finds the strength to keep running his mouth. He speaks around the broken nose, “You know, we’re not so different, you and I.”

Her vision nearly goes white in her anger. _I am nothing like you_.

There is enough blood on her hands to qualify her as a raider. She’s killed enough of them for sure, even a score of Talon Company too. Regulators sometimes even look at her sideways. She’s been a merc, sure, but she never killed anyone who didn’t have it coming anyway.

Lesko, Eulogy Jones, Forty, Sibley and Braun.

But Autumn – the man who ripped the last of her family away – he’s only ever killed those who got in his way. He’s made stepping stones of bodies. 

The gun in her hand feels like judgment, vengeance. It’s wrath in her hands: pure and simple.

With one loud, echoing shot, Autumn dies.

When the ringing in her ears finally fades, the intercom is spitting static and words. She recognizes the voice of Doctor Li, shouting about something and barking orders to be quick about it. Grace barely hears the words exchanged between Sarah and the woman. It almost doesn’t register, even as the Geiger counter on her wrist starts to issue its familiar complaint. Autumn is dead at her feet, his blood dripping through the metal walkway to the ground below, and it doesn’t feel... quite right. Not how she expected it to at least.

_There's no relief_ , she thinks as she looks into the place where Autumn's head used to be. 

“Damn it all!” Sarah shouts. Grace jumps, startled, suddenly refocused.

Sarah looks away from the intercom, right at Grace. Looking at her, she can see the sudden sadness in her eyes. Grace blinks back and speaks around the scratch in the back of her throat, “What’s wrong?”

“One of us is going to have to go in there and turn the damned thing on.” She says, pausing. Then softer, “and whoever does it isn’t coming back out.”

“I’ll do it,” Grace says almost numbly. Of course this is how it goes; some part of her always knew. “I’ll start the purifier.”

Sarah blinks at her for a heartbeat of a moment, then nods. “You’re going to have to be quick. The radiation is bad in there, and getting worse. You’re not going to have much time.”

Grace nods, understanding, and triggers the release switch for her power armor. The back panel opens, and she steps free out of the rig. There’s no point in dying in it.

She starts to walk in the direction of the glass door that seals off the purifier. For a moment she’s standing there, breaking her rifle against the glass as her father looks at her one last time – 

But only for a moment. Sarah Lyons reaches out, puts her hand on Grace’s shoulder, and pulls her back. 

She looks at Sarah and it’s like someone has unleashed a mason jar of butterflies in her stomach. Like seeing her for the first time again on her way to GNR. She’s come a long way, hasn’t she, from being that fresh-out-of-the-Vault kid who stumbled her way into a war zone. She’s honorary Pride now, and fought her way to the memorial at Sarah’s side. Maybe that counts for something.

“I won’t forget what you’ve done here,” She says. “Thank you.” And Grace wants to believe that maybe she could’ve been something. 

_There is so much I wish I had done and said_ , she thinks. But there’s no use saying it now.

Grace just nods, words stuck in the back of her throat. Her hand finds Sarah’s armored one, gives a light squeeze, then she walks forward and out of her reach. 

The Geiger counter ticks away. 

She thinks of Charon. How he’s probably waiting somewhere for her to return. By now he probably thinks she’s dead or worse after Vault 87. He has Dogmeat, he’s survived the end of the world and everything in between. He’ll be okay.

She hears every echoing footstep as she approaches the keypad. Can feel the cross hidden under her shirt. Secure in her pockets are the holotapes: Better Days, the photo of her tenth birthday, and her father’s last good-bye. The one Jonas never got to give her. The one she never listened too. It doesn’t much matter now, she was there to hear his final good-bye anyway.

She thinks of Butch. Wasting time in Rivet City, waiting for her to come back and meet up at the bar. He probably won’t wait long, he’ll move on. 

She’s painfully aware of every breath she takes as her fingers hover over the keypad. Her father never told her the code, but her fingers start to type: 2 – 1 – 6. Framed on a desk in the Vault, on his wall in the clinic, and a childhood spent reciting it: She doesn’t know what else it could be.

The radiation in the room jumps. The wave that rolls into her sends her staggering, the Geiger counter screaming now at her wrist. The purifier roars, starting up its booting sequence. Behind her Sarah screams something, but the words are too far away. 

She falls to her knees then slumps sideways. Suddenly too heavy to stand as the room spins for one awfully long moment. 

_I am Alpha and Omega..._

Some part of her brain clings on, starts to echo the familiar words to her as everything starts to fail. On the metal floor, just like her Father, and she’s looking up into the face of Jefferson. 

Her lungs just won’t quit, desperate for another breath and another after that. Don’t they know it’s useless? 

Her vision starts to go green, watching the waters churn around the long dead president. His stone gaze locked with hers: another witness of her final moment.

_... The beginning and the end ..._

She doesn’t make it through the rest of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I based the power armor mechanics off the ones in 4 because they make a bit more sense and they’re pretty much canon.


	14. Island Getaway

The sun is setting over the water where Rivet City stands. Grace is sitting on the deck, her legs dangling over the side and her arms resting on the railing. To her left sits Butch, who holds the bottle in his outstretched hand.

She accepts it, takes a swig, and swallows. It’s something Belle insisted was whiskey, but it doesn’t burn quite right. Probably watered or a weak brew. “You still up for starting that gang?” She asks after the silence has stretched on between them.

“You have to ask? The Tunnel Snakes will slither again, someday.” Butch replies, holding out his hand again. Graces passes the bottle back. “Just gotta find the right guys to join up with. We’ll be the biggest, baddest gang in the wastes.” He takes his drink, then adds, “You’ll see.” 

“You make it sound like a raider gang.” Grace says, looking out over the water. She tries not to look at the building where she sniped that mutant master with the minigun. She just wants to watch the nothingness of the landscape, but her eyes still drift back. Still mindful, a sign she’s still too sober.

Butch pauses with his lips around the rim of the bottle, feigns a look of insult. “You sayin’ I couldn’t be a raider if I wanted to?” 

Grace snorts. “No. You’re too much of a pretty boy to go roughing it up with a bunch of chem heads.” 

Butch takes another swig, pretends to think, then says, “Alright, maybe not those raiders.”

“So, who would be in this theoretical gang of yours then?”

“Hmmm. Well, since Fred and Wally didn’t want to see what the great outdoors have to offer us, I guess I’m stuck with pretty slim pickings.” Butch replies and there she can hear the hurt. The divide between the Vault and him: he wanted the rest of the world. 

Grace went running into it, chased out into the vast emptiness and haunting desolation of the wastes. It was never her choice. But, once you learn the world is not Vault sized, it’s hard to go back. Even now, after six months in the wastes, she doesn’t think she would return if she could. Her father is dead, Amata doesn’t want her, and the hallways are haunted by the dead: Jonas, Paul, Janice, Jim, and even Steve Mack – that asshole. Their faces are among the many that sometimes twist and haunt her in her dreams. 

There’s nothing to return to.

“I need to get out of here,” Grace says absently, looking over the Potomac River. She holds her hand back out to Butch.

“And where would you go, nosebleed?” He asks, taking a quick third swig before passing the bottle back.

Grace shrugs, “Quinn’s mentioned a couple of places: the Commonwealth and The Pitt to the north, and Crater Banks to the south.” She takes a sip and swallows. Her pip-boy has picked up another signal recently, someone advertising a ferry service. 

She just needs to put distance between herself and the ghosts. Maybe then she’ll sleep at night. But then again, after two weeks of nothing, perhaps sleep is the last thing she needs too. After all, she woke up while Sarah hasn’t yet. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, but then again nothing ever goes right for that kid from 101 now does it?

Grace brings the bottle back to her lips, takes barely half a mouthful as she hits the end of the bottle, then looks offended at the glass. “We’re running dry here.” 

“Your turn to get the refill.”

“No, I got the last one.” Grace replies, leaning backwards so that her back is resting on the deck. “I’m not drunk enough to forget yet, but nice try.” She looks up at Butch as he groans, getting to his feet and heads off to The Muddy Rudder for another bottle.

The minutes tick by as she watches the clouds. She can’t just keep haunting the Capital Wasteland, listening to Three Dog’s stories about her: The Strider of the Wastes.

Now there’s the joke, her haunting the wastes like it isn’t the other way around. She’s haunted, others become haunted by association. 

She watches a particularly thin cloud against the backdrop of the setting sun drift past, while somewhere in the distance she can hear the complaints of Brahmin. It’s another water caravan about to make a circuit. Her parent’s legacy finally fulfilled and she doesn’t have a part to play anymore. The Brotherhood oversees everything to do with the daily maintenance of the purifier, Rivet City runs the caravans, and everything has been set up and moves along without her.

Grace breathes a heavy sigh. Megaton, Rivet City, even the Brotherhood in the Citadel, it’s all getting old. She needs to move on. Everyone else already has: Dr. Li traveled north, she hasn’t seen Charon since Vault 87 – if he didn’t think she was dead before then he certainly does by now – Moira has been publishing her book, and the Brotherhood has its own business to tend to. There’s no room for a former Vault mechanic. 

She can always find Butch at the bar, but three days of drinking her troubles away with him is starting to feel as dull as everything else. She can’t just drink her life away at the bar like Jericho does, even if she has Butch for company. But what else is there to do?

“There’s nothing here for me,” she says to the setting sky above her.

* * *

Grace has her hands covered in grease, shitty moonshine, and probably a dozen other things she’s better off not knowing. She still forces the wrench to turn, despite the slickness of her hands. She’s never repaired a moonshine still before, but it doesn’t seem that complicated to her. It’s reconnecting metal piping and fixing the wiring on the hotplate; it’s not switching a relay dish atop a monument. 

Marguerite, having dropped the accent of fake sickness, says, “Well this is gonna be great! Just wait till you taste the tonic that comes out of my still!” 

These days Grace may drink more than her fair share, but even she isn’t so desperate to drink something with that much battery acid in it. But she’s getting paid a good amount of caps for this repair, so she keeps her mouth shut.

After a month at sea, cramped inside a tiny cabin and with only Tobar to talk to, anything is an improvement in comparison; even Pilgrim’s Landing. The tourist trap turned town seems nearly vacant, with the exception of a handful of people. A quickly dwindling handful, as within the first hour of Grace’s arrival she witnessed Panada’s protecteron kill a would-be robber in front of the makeshift store in the former shooting gallery.

Her original plan walking off the boat and into the fog hanging over the settlement was to ask around for Nadine, but so far she’s only managed to get her hands dirty. Just another job, like searching for lost people. 

At least it’s familiar.

A small part of Grace hopes it doesn’t end as badly for Nadine as it did for her father and her. But there isn’t much hope left in Grace. After all it’s the wasteland: that cold unforgiving bitch. It doesn’t really matter if she finds Nadine in good health or not; a job is a job and she’ll still get her caps.

The world continues to turn regardless of if people are alive to see it happen or not. 

After tightening the last bolt and seeing the still slowly heat back to life, Grace walks out of Pilgrim’s Landing two hundred caps richer. The only direction she has is Calvert Mansion.

* * *

She has been walking west, deeper and deeper into the swamp for what feels like hours. She feels eyes on the back of her neck: mirelurks or the dolls hanging from branches, she’s not quite sure. She still jumps at every sound within the swamp.

_How did it come to this_ , she asks herself. She decides it’s just like everything else. Like always, she was too eager to assist Desmond in defending Calvert Mansion from the locals. And now she’s walking through the swamp because a local cult won’t let her into the church until she “expands her mind” and brings back a handful of seeds. Why does she want to get into the local cult’s church? Well, Desmond sent her and she still hasn’t found Nadine.

Its bullshit, she knows it is: she’s too damn nice for her own damn good. She shouldn’t be doing anything for a handful of people who mean nothing to her. She doesn’t owe the world a thing, not after she tried to die for it. Her parent’s work, finally complete and the Capital Wasteland has a steady supply of drinking water, and what has it gotten her? Nothing. Just shin deep in bog water. 

Grace walks on, swamp water filling into her boots. With each step she hears the squelch of mud. It’s hard to keep her footing and scan the distance for threats. She swats at a particularly determined mosquito as it lands near her brow. 

The thing is, if she’s being honest – and honestly what else is there at this point – it actually feels good to be needed again. To have some kind of goal once more. Maybe that’s all she’s fated for: to be a bleeding heart mercenary until something gets her killed. 

After the purifier, it’s not the worst way to go. A realization that makes the back of her throat burn.

When she finally reaches the clearing, she knows she’s in the right place. The voice on the intercom wasn’t exaggerating, it’s the mother of all Punga fruits alright. The tree is large, sagging, speckled bog mud brown and yellow, with the seed pods dangling from its vines. 

Grace pulls the seeds with her outstretched hands when the odor hits her. Foul and sticky, coating her throat and intruding deep into her lungs. She coughs, her vision blurs. At some point she must’ve fallen, she doesn’t quite remember, but she stands and brushes the mud from her clothes. 

The world feels wrong as she tries to retrace her steps, the seeds still clutched in her hands. She knows it’s more than a feeling when she sees the first bobblehead. 

_'Tsk. Tsk. Walked right into another trap. Exactly how stupid are you?'_ A voice somewhere in the swamp says as she collects it. However when she looks again, it’s not in her hands anymore. 

Grace pushes forward, focuses on putting one leg in-front of the other. “I’m hallucinating,” she says, knowing as she watches a bonesaw sawing midair while somewhere in the trees a violin plays. “It’s a bad reaction to…something in the seeds.” She watches the hanging dolls wave and point her forward along the path. 

_'Keep it up, you’re almost there…wherever ‘there’ may be…probably nowhere.'_ Another bobblehead says while nuka-cola bottles explode around her. Mininuke explosions that sound like baby screams. Grace runs, staggers and trips into the bog water. She coughs, wipes her mouth of the murky contents. She gets up and tries to run again. 

She's still running when she hear's the next one's words in her ears. _'Isn’t it funny how everything you get close to ends up leaving?'_ Trying her best to ignore it, she continues to stumble through the swampy waters. Somewhere she can hear her Geiger counter. The world flips. She walks on tree branches and tries to block out the words of the upside-down bobblehead floating on fishing line. She tries not to watch the ghostly needle stitching nothing in front of her eyes.

She pushes on, fear pooling in her stomach. She doesn’t know where she is. They said people lose their mind in the swamp, will she end up like the other island locals? She tries not to think about it as the Charisma bobblehead mocks her. She passes the skeleton in the party hat and tries not to look as her vision blurs red for a gut punching minute.

But it’s hard when she starts seeing bodies: Lucas Simms, Moira Brown, Amata, Elder Lyons, some wasteland settlers she’s seen in passing. Each time she approaches they disappear. 

_'Dead mother, life in a post-nuclear wasteland, and not a friend in it. Yeah, you aren’t exactly blessed,'_ the luck bobblehead taunts from ashore. 

“Shut up!” Grace screams. But the bobblehead is gone, there’s just the Megaton bomb and Mister Burke standing beside it. 

But the voice that comes out of him doesn’t fit the quite right: “Don’t get up yet, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Grace doesn’t get the chance to shout her reply. 

The bomb explodes and, suddenly, she wakes up again just outside the door to the Sacred Bog. Her head is pounding against her skull, but her own palm on her head reveals that instead of the stubble of her slowly regrowing hair, her scalp feels freshly shaven. A sinking feeling settles in her stomach to match her pounding headache. Her fingers find and trace the freshly sewn wound along her scalp, and that feels worse than everything in the hallucination. She obviously didn’t sew herself back together in her delirium. 

She still has a handful of punga seeds, those are in her pocket. At least some part of her was with it enough to preserve the whole reason she went into the bog in the first place.

She checks her Pip-boy map, and knows that it’s a bit of a hike across the island back to the Ark & Dove Cathedral. Not wasting time, Grace stands and readies her gun. Though her steps are slightly unsteady, she ignores the headache and pushes herself onward. She still has a delivery to make, and now she has questions that need answering. 

Because someone is going to pay for the latest scar in her head.

* * *

When she leaves Point Lookout, Calvert Mansion is a pile of rubble. Not her fault, and at least Desmond survived. It’s better than what happened to others on the island. The things she had a hand in; because somehow she always ends up involved.

Nadine is the newest owner of The Duchess Gambit, a fair trade for what Tobar took from her. The same thing he took from Grace. She has a piece of her own brain in a jar now, tucked away inside her backpack. As wrong as it feels to have its weight in her bag, it felt just as wrong to leave it on the boat.

Tobar, however, is somewhere out at sea. Grace threw his body overboard within the first week of setting sail with Nadine. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind, but he took a chunk of her brain and some things simply cannot be forgiven. Not after he drugged her and left her to stumble half-dead through the bog. 

When she arrives back on the mainland of the Capital Wasteland after two months at sea and two weeks on the island, none of it feels better. 

She watches Catherine embrace her daughter, feels a twinge of jealousy settle over her, and then starts walking the long familiar road towards Megaton. Though he knows she’s prone to long absences, she hasn’t seen Wadsworth in a long while. Hopefully he doesn’t think she’s dead either.

With the sun and her heavy pack on her back, the trek up the cracked pavement road is long. It’s easier than navigating the bogs of Point Lookout, a change she’s thankful for. She thought the island would give her something to do, give her some kind of direction for what she’s supposed to do with the rest of her life, but she doesn’t have an answer. 

Only a hollow feeling and a piece of her own brain in a jar.


	15. Same Old Circles

Grace wakes up tangled in Butch’s limbs. He’s still sound asleep, but the minutes tick by and Grace doesn’t fall back asleep. Instead, her brain torments her with the hyper-awareness of her stiff body and the heat in the room – only elevated by sharing body heat.

It’s not the first time they’ve been bed partners. Friends with benefits, nothing more. She knows Butch can tell things aren’t what they used to be, not after her two month trip to the island. Hell, not after Project Purity if she’s really being honest. 

But he doesn’t ask, he knows better than to ask. For that much at least Grace is thankful. So together they fall into a cycle: drink and waste time, satisfy their needs at night, and settle into drunken sleep until the next day. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The minutes tick by slowly and Grace is wide awake by the end of what she estimates to be an hour. Moving slowly, she inches her way out of Butch’s grasp. He still sleeps too soundly like one does when accustomed to the security of the Vault. For all he cares, Rivet City is just as safe with its creaking and rusting metal walls. Or perhaps he pretends it is, though it doesn’t make much difference to Grace.

Once she’s free, she slowly rises from the bed and quietly collects her clothing. Days ago, staring at a piece of cerebral tissue that used to be a part of her, she made the promise to herself: no more feelings. 

It won’t be the first time he’s woken up to an empty bed. But she’ll be back. For some reason she always comes back.

No more feelings, but she’s always cared too much.

* * *

She runs smack into Susie Mack of all people outside of Rivet City. She’d recognize the jumpsuit anywhere as well as the person wearing it. 

Susie is all smiles as she says hello. Grace returns it with a fake one of her own. She is the last person she wants to see. Well, almost the last, but close enough. 

It seems Amata can send her new girlfriend out and still welcome her back. Grace can feel her teeth grind against each other as Susie talks. 

“The Vault is doing fine.” Susie says with warm smile and light hearted tone. “We’re trading now, we even have a nice deal going on with Megaton. I’m on my way to Rivet City to see if we can work something out there too.” 

“That’s great,” Grace says. The smile doesn’t reach her eyes. For a moment she thinks – knows – that she’s faster, can pull her pistol before Susie can. After almost a full year in the wastes, Grace has the skills to show for it. 

‘ _If I kill her now, no one will know_ ’, the darker part of her mind wonders. _How long will it take for Amata to give up on her new girlfriend?_

But Grace doesn’t kill her. Instead Susie hands her a bottle of purified water. Vault grade for old times sake as she puts it. Grace almost wants to chuck it back at her head.

Instead she realizes how deeply her fingernails were pressed into her palm as feeling comes back to her hand around the bottle. Instead Grace just stands there, bottle in hand, as she watches Susie’s retreating form walk up the road and up the stairs. Grace waits, standing there long after Susie is out of sight. Then she tosses the water in her pack. There’s no point in wasting a resource even though the Purifier is up and running.

Even if she wants to, just out of spite.

“No more feelings,” Grace says once the pack is on her back once more. She ducks into one the Metro tunnels and doesn’t look back.

* * *

Grace is sitting in the vertibird alongside Sarah Lyons and a pair of Knights while explosions rock the air behind them. _'The Enclave won’t recover from this,'_ she thinks to herself as the vertibird sails across the sky.

But Grace thinks that neither she nor Sarah ever will either. It’s hard to miss the touch of yellow around Sarah’s blue eyes, the winded quality to her breathing, or the gaunt look to her face that has settled in since the incident at Project Purity. It’s so much more pronounced on Sarah than it is on Grace. There’s an injustice to that fact: it was Grace who entered the chamber after all.

‘ _Not my fault Moira Brown discovered a mutation with my DNA when I sat in that puddle outside of Craterside,_ ’ Grace thinks. Because there’s always something to do with her: some reason she survives when everyone else around her dies. It’s not like she hasn’t tried to die for them too.

Grace looks at the other members of the Pride sitting on either side of Sarah. They haven’t left Sarah’s side once. No matter how badly she wanted to part of Operation Broken Steel, she was kept far from the front lines. ‘ _Probably her father’s orders,_ ' Grace decides. 

It left Grace to do all the leg work from within the Enclave’s base. It’s amazing the kind of chaos a few loose Deathclaws cause. Although they’re nobody’s problem now that the missiles have reduced the whole place to rubble, if the sound of the explosions can be trusted. It’s the second time she’s walked away from an exploding base.

Together they land in the courtyard of the Citadel. Grace walks a few extra feet to steady the shaking in her knees. She stops short of the door to the lower level where Elder Lyons no doubt is waiting for a report. None of the others stop to acknowledge her as they walk past. Only Sarah does, placing her hand on Grace’s shoulder. “You were amazing!” 

Grace smiles lightly. It feels genuine for the first time in what feels like a long, long time. 

“I won’t forget what you did for us.” An echo of what she said before the purifier bathed them both in radiation. Grace can see Sarah’s lips still moving, knows that she’s still talking, but the words are drowned out. Words catch in Grace’s throat. 

_Revelation 216: I am Alpha and Omega..._

_She’s entering the code. The radiation hits. The room spins. She falls to her knees, her lungs fight for breath as the air itself burns in her chest. She dies._

And then the moment is over. Sarah walks away and all Grace can do is watch until she’s inside, the door slamming shut behind her. And Grace is left alone in the courtyard, her heartbeat hammering in her chest. 

Grace lets go of the breath she’s been holding on to for too many seconds. Her hands shake and she curls her fingers into fists to steady them. Then she turns and walks towards the gate.

“I did a job, nothing more.” She tells herself as the metal gate creeks shut behind her. She doesn't need Lyon's praise or any other bullshit speech. After everything her life has been over the last year, it's the last thing she needs.

She gets her last look at the courtyard, the initiates training and the Knights running drills. Then Grace puts it all to her back. She takes the road to the metro tunnel to the northwest; Rivet City on her mind. The tunnel might be longer, but she doesn't feel like swimming in mirelurk water so close to sundown. Besides, she still has a bottle of Marguerite's moonshine and she's sure that Butch will welcome her back again.

And if he doesn't, “No more feelings,” she whispers as she walks the along the cracked road.


	16. The Lowest Hole

Grace is face down in the dirt, panic stricken, with her hands and knees scraped raw and angry red. Her throat is parched from steel dust and radiation thick in the air of the Steelyard. Seven steel ingots clattered to the ground when she tripped. She leaves them scattered on the pavement as she scrambles to her feet and takes off at a full run. She can hear the Trogs coming close behind her, she dares not look back. 

She runs with the air thick in her lungs and the shuffling, croaking noises of the Trogs behind her. Till she runs past the utility protectrons she got back online. She doesn’t stop to watch as they open fire on the Trogs. 

She keeps going, till her legs almost give out and she struggles to catch her breath. She rounds the corner of an office she recently cleared out and takes a moment to breathe, which is hard to do with the collar tight around her neck. Her eyes water and threaten to spill over. ‘ _Stupid_ ,’ she mentally scolds, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. Only to end up smearing dirt and grime over her face. ‘ _Crying is a waste of water_.’ 

She brushes her thumb over her scraped palm, brushing dirt and caught bits of gravel from the wound. It stings, but everything about the Pitt seems to sting.  
  
She was so close, she had seven ingots before the Trogs surprised her. Now she has to start her search all over again. Or risk tracing her steps and running into more Trogs. After all, the more steel she finds, the deeper she has to wander into the yard. 

“Just go in and steal the cure. It’ll be easy with that fancy suit of yours,” Grace angrily mocks as she creeps back along the path. She doesn’t have the stealth suit anymore. She doesn’t have her reinforced vault suit either. She doesn’t have her pistol, her combat knife, or her assault rifle. She doesn’t have any of the holotapes, the eight ball, the photograph or the beaded necklace either. Instead she has an explosive collar for a necklace, tattered rags for clothing, and a padlocked harness for armor; the lock of which dangles painfully against her diaphragm. Her skin is a constellation of bruising from her beat down at the main gate outside the bridge.

For a man who had escaped, Wernher certainly didn’t know enough to keep her from falling into the trap at the gate. Where a handful of raiders beat her into submission, stripped her of everything, threw a collar on her and laughed as the gate to freedom shut tight behind her.

“Screw you Wernher.” She says under her breath, teeth gritted as she pulls the heavy ingots into her arms.

If she ever makes it out of the Pitt, she’ll kill him herself.

* * *

“Would you look at that,” Everett says when she dumps the heavy ingots on his counter. “You're one hell of a steeler, kid. That's your third complete haul.” His smile is wide, showing rotting yellow teeth.

Grace says nothing. After three and a half days in the Pitt, she knows better than to speak. ‘ _No more feelings_ ,’ she reminds herself and waits until he dismisses her. Then she begins the walk back through the factory towards Downtown. She’ll go back to Midea’s room, it’s not like she knows anywhere else to go. 

Once inside Midea gives a startled jump and looks up from her desk, sees Grace and then relaxes once more. “I see you survived the steelyard today.” She says, eyeing Grace as she walks in with a tray of slop from Kai. “You’re a little worse for wear though.”

“Had a friendly disagreement with a couple of Trogs,” Grace replies, sitting on the edge of the filthy mattress. Looking down she can see that two of her toenails have gone black in the open-toed sandals. It must’ve happened when she tripped, she thinks as she balances the tray on her lap and begins to poke at it with a fork. The taste is foul, but she’s hungry enough to eat it anyway. “I’ll be fine,” she finally says when Midea’s stare makes her skin start to itch. Though that might be from the dirt in her scrapes and the rads she’s soaked up over the past couple of days. 

“I guess Wernher picked the right person to send in,” Midea says. Grace holds her tongue, pretends to focus on chewing. It’s better than starting an argument with the only support she has in this hell hole. 

‘ _Wernher is an asshole_ ,’ She thinks while chewing something particularly rubbery. ‘ _And I’m the bigger ass for agreeing to his stupid plan_.’

Midea looks as though she is about to say something more, until another slave comes into the room. A man, balding and with a disease riddled face says, “Ashur wants us all in the courtyard. I think he’s going to open The Hole up again.” Then he leaves as quickly as he came. 

Midea stands, “Come on. This is perfect for us.” She starts walking towards the door.

“What’s The Hole?” Grace asks as she stands from the bed and begins to follow. She leaves the slop tray behind on the bed. She doesn’t think temperature will really make a difference one way or another when it comes to the slop. 

“It's simple, really,” Midea says as she opens the door. “From time to time, Ashur opens up the arena. Any slave who wants to can fight against the gladiators. If you win, you get your freedom. More importantly: you get an audience with Ashur. It's the only way a slave will ever get to talk to him directly.”

“So you want me to fight in an arena called The Hole?” Grace asks, walking into the square.

“It’s the best chance you’ll get for getting close enough to the cure to steal it.” Midea says.

Grace wants to say more, but one of the raiders on one of the balconies above shoots off several rounds of an assault rifle. “Shut up! The Lord of the Pitt is about to speak!” 

Another man Grace assumes is Ashur launches into a long speech about the dawn of the Pitt’s golden age, but she doesn’t catch all the words. She’s busy taking note of the details of his power armor. It’s obviously salvaged and repaired, but the way he walks in the rig screams Brotherhood to her. Its information she files away. 

Grace isn’t paying attention until Midea grabs her wrist and lifts her hand high into the air. She volunteers her to fight for freedom. A volunteer that Ashur accepts all too quickly. 

“When you’re ready to be forged anew, find Faydra in the Mill.” Ashur instructs. He looks at her from over the railing on the balcony above and Grace meets his eye. She doesn’t back down from his gaze, and he doesn’t back down from her challenge. He stands straighter, rigid in his stance and gives her a look she’s only seen the Outcasts give.

‘ _Definitely Brotherhood_ ,’ Grace decides.

* * *

Grace stands outside of the entrance tunnel and gets her first look at the Hole. The arena is packed with obstacles and barrels with radioactive waste hang from the ceiling. She can see a couple of slaves holding the ropes between the links of the arena’s fenced in ceiling. 

They’re not the only slaves working the arena, as she sees the other three standing at each of the other entrances. She has a baseball bat and they have guns, she notices. Her grip on the handle tightens as the announcer runs his mouth. She only has to kill one of them to get a gun.

‘ _I’m not afraid to die_ ,’ she thinks, ‘ _I just refuse to die in this shithole_.’ 

The barrels drop, the gate swings open, and Grace rushes towards the woman on her left. Grace has muscle and more weight than the disease riddled woman. She uses that fact against her as she slams into her and knocks her to the ground. 

Grace lifts the bat over her head then brings it down with a sickening crack as the crowd’s mixed screams and cheers ring in her ears. It almost drowns out the familiar screaming of the Geiger counter at her wrist.

She drops the bat, grabs the gun. She does not look at the blood pooling at her feet. She does not look at the body. She aims, pulls the trigger: once then twice. She barely registers that the other two bodies have fallen when she turns and runs back to her gate before the radiation has a chance to kill her. She knows she won as the announcer is shouting over the loudspeaker.

“I will not die in this hole. I will not die of radiation.” She says as she pulls the gate back open and starts to run back to Faydra.

* * *

Grace is on her knees, covered in blood, and burnt flesh stings her nose. One of the Bear brothers is dead and the other is screaming almost as loud as she is. 

Obviously she killed the wrong one first. But she doesn’t have time to linger on that thought.

The man points the flamer at her again, and Grace can see his hand tighten around the trigger. She throws herself across the ground; scraping her knees raw and bloody. She can feel the lick of heat, but avoids the second blast of flame. She scrambles, her hand around one of the other brother’s grenades. She pulls the pin and throws it at the man’s feet.  
  
Her heartbeat hammers in her chest for a long painful second as the spray of fire swings back in her direction before the man is gone in an ear ringing explosion. His body is blown several feet in the air, landing on one of the barrels. She waits a second, he does not move. 

She struggles to her feet, the burns on her lower back and legs screaming in protest as the crowd screams around her. She has to make it back to the gate.

“I will not die here. I will not die here.” She says with every shaky step.

* * *

“It’s a real nasty burn,” Midea says as Grace lays on the bed. She flinches when the woman brings a needle to her skin and she hears the release of a stimpak flowing into her system. “That’s the best we can do. It’s going to have to be enough.” 

Grace can hear the unspoken worry. Arena contestants only have twenty-four hours of rest between fights. Any longer and she forfeits her chance at freedom.

“Get some rest, I’ll go grab some food from Kai.” Midea says to fill the silence. Grace, laying on her stomach, doesn’t reply and waits to move until she hears the tell-tale sound of the door clicking shut.

Then she screams into the pillow. Screams until her throat goes raw. When she resurfaces for air, she sees that her tears have mixed with the saliva stains on the filthy pillow. She wipes her eyes and steels herself, flips the pillow over and settles back down onto the mattress. She sits in ear ringing silence.

She has two choices: Fight and die, or quit and die a slave of the Pitt. 

Both of them she hates.


	17. Never Again

“And now, this slave has proven willing to kill and die for her freedom! But how will she fare against the man who made it all the way: Gruber!” The arena announcer shouts and the stands go wild. “Undefeated in the Hole, Gruber has yet to meet his match. Only one will walk out with their freedom! Only one will walk out alive!”

“I will not die in this hole,” Grace whispers to herself, though she doesn’t quite believe it. Her legs have mostly healed overnight from the stimpaks, but her lower back still aches with the dull sting of a healing burn. Midea’s only advice had annoyed her: the suggestion that she’ll just have to push through it. Grace didn’t correct her that she’s been pushing herself through worse for nearly a year now.

“Release the barrels! GO!”

Grace hears the familiar scream from her Geiger counter as the barrels fall, the gate swings open. She isn’t worried about them, she’s more concerned with the well armored man across from her. If he shoots her, he will kill her: this she knows. But she is also quick with a gun. She lifts the poorly maintained pistol she pulled from the locker room. She clicks the safety off, pulls the slide back on the gun and prepares to shoot. 

She shoots and shoots, bullets bouncing off armor, till the clip runs dry. Not even a full clip at that. Gruber laughs, taking aim with his own rifle. For a man who has survived the Pitt several times over, he’s a pretty shitty shot. And he’s a man who favors distance, Grace realizes as with every step forward he takes one back.

With the dull roar in her ears, Grace rushes at him. She ignores the pain in her legs, and fights through the white hot pain that bursts into her hip and shoulder. She’s endured bullet wounds and worse before.

By his reaction it’s the last thing he expects as he hits the fenced wall. He never expected her to throw herself at him and let her weight knock them both to the ground either. Gruber is a raider, better fed than herself and the slave she knocked down in her first match. She has barely enough weight to her to make a difference and knock him off balance in his own heavy armor. 

But it’s the marginal difference that counts.

Grace hears him exhale – sharp and painful – as she knocks the air from him, and there’s a stunned moment that she’s quick to take advantage of as she begins to savagely rip the helmet from his head. He looks up at her, dazed for a head spinning second as she tosses the helmet and quickly shifts into a better position to keep him pinned down. Knees on his diaphragm, a hand on his neck, and her other hand curled around the pistol.

Too many seconds too late the realization sets in as his eyes go wide, watching her raise the butt of her pistol in the air and swing it down on his face. 

She brings it down with a quick, heavy swing again and again. Maybe it’s the radiation sickiness starting, but she feels like she’s in the Rotunda of the Jefferson memorial all over again. She pauses to see Gruber’s bloody face, but only sees Autumn. 

_“Murderer?”_ The ghost of Autumn echoes in the back of her mind. _“What does that make you?”_ Grace stares at Gruber’s bloody face: Broken bloody nose, swelling eye, split lip. And she registers the blood all over her hands. 

_“You know, we’re not so different, you and I.”_ The ghost says again and Grace only screams. Bringing the gun down on his face again with a wet sounding thump.

The Pitt – the Wasteland – is not made for vault kids who only mean well and want to find their runaway fathers. They don’t survive. The world is too cruel for them to survive. Instead they die, little by little, until the person they are is no longer recognizable.

Vault 101. Tranquility Lane. Grayditch. Tenpenny Tower. Paradise Falls. Vault 87 and Raven Rock. The Capital Wasteland and everything beyond it.

“Holy shit guys, she’s still going!” The announcer says and it sounds so far away. Grace looks down and his face doesn’t look like a face anymore. It takes too long for her to realize that Gruber isn’t even struggling against her hold anymore. 

Grace stumbles off the body as awareness comes back. The arena, the thunderous cheers, the loud ticking at her wrist. She looks down at the pip-boy and sees that her rads are way too high. Impossibly high.

Heart hammering in her chest, she stumbles towards the gate.

Faydra laughs and congratulates her, handling the rad-away like she has the previous fights. But her tone has shifted from Grace’s first meeting. “It’s been awhile since we had a good slaughter,” from her first day at the Hole to now, “You killed the fuck out of Gruber! I’ve never seen anything like that before!” 

Surprise, Grace realizes as she sits on the bench with the rad-away needle in her arm. They never thought she’d make it. It was a rigged game from the start.

But then again she knew that from the beginning too.

* * *

Grace pulls her arms through the vault suit and zips it up. It’s not as snug as she remembers it, having become slightly baggy in her near week since arriving at the Pitt. But having it covering her like a second skin is a relief; a comfortable, familiar kind of relief. 

Of her original items they’ve given back the armored Vault 101 suit and her guns. The rest they tossed, melted down, and scrapped for anything useful. No one will tell her what they did with the stealth suit.

And being newly freed, Grace doesn’t push her luck. 

Instead she walks out of the Mill, but not out into Downtown. She walks as a freed woman into Uptown; walks shoulder to shoulder with the raiders, the masters of the Pitt.

Looking down she can see the other slaves. Few look up, most keep their heads down and continue their work. Others she sees gathered in a corner near the skeletal remains of a truck. ‘ _Stupidly obvious_ ,’ Grace thinks. 

She walks up the path to Haven and past the obnoxiously large statue. Twisted metal in the likeness of man, but chained down with jets of fire erupting occasionally. Grace doesn’t linger on its supposed grand appearance or whatever metaphor it represents. 

She has a meeting with the Lord of the Pitt to attend.

* * *

Their “cure” is an infant. 

Grace’s first thought is not so much surprise that the Pitt’s cure is an infant, but a bubbling anger that she’s been lied to. They knew and didn’t tell her; after all a lie by omission is still a lie. 

Somewhere distantly in her thoughts Grace remembers Midea’s words: “The cure is the first thing in this place that hasn’t been infected.” And Grace clenches her fists. Grace thought she was after a “thing” not a person. But a thing cannot be infected, only people can. That’s a clever trick. 

‘ _Oh fuck you, Wernher._ ’ Grace thinks, looking down at Marie’s crib while Sandra happily explains her immunity. Because both he and Midea are surely mistaken if they think that she will steal an infant for them.

This is what Grace has suffered for: bled for, worked for, fought for, and enslaved her own damn self for. The realization is a burning in the pit of her stomach. 

‘ _Fuck the whole Pitt_.’

* * *

“So, I suppose you signed on with Ashur and his kind, did you?” Midea sneers as a way of greeting. “You’re not the first to win their freedom and forget where they came from.”

“Where I came from?” Grace repeats. Then angrier, “Where I came from? I came from the Capital Wasteland! I tried to sneak in and was forced into slavery! It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been tricked into doing so by Wernher! Did you forget that?”

“You’ve been here a week, don’t pretend you’re better than us! You know what we suffer, and you still let Ashur keep the cure!”

“You didn’t really expect me to steal a baby, did you?” Grace says. “And thanks for telling me the whole story by the way. Very clever, because I wouldn’t have done shit from the start had I known.” 

“No, we expected you to steal the one thing that was both a cure for our children, and a hostage to earn our freedom. But congratulations, you petty sentimentality has doomed us to continued slavery and pestilence. Thanks.” Midea sneers, the lines in her forehead creasing deeper.

Grace grinds her teeth, then loosens her jaw to say, “Spare me the needs-of-the-many speech, Midea. I don’t have the time or desire to argue this point with you. Just tell me where Wernher is hiding.” 

“Why should I tell you that?” 

“Because your riot isn’t going to change shit.” Grace replies. “If you haven’t noticed, it’s only getting the rest of the slaves killed. Amazingly, saws and blades don’t really do much against bullets and the high ground.”

“Better to die than continue living under their thumb, you should know that!”

But Grace has had enough. She steps forward, grabs the woman by the collar of her rags and holds a pistol under her chin. “Look, this plays out one of two ways. One, you tell me and I go and we never see each other again. Or two, I drag you through the steelyard in chains, kicking and screaming until I find Wernher myself. And I don’t care if the Trogs get you.” 

Midea opens her mouth, then shuts it. She actually pauses to think, to see if Grace is serious. And make no mistake, Grace is deathly serious. She is not the same Grace she was nearly a year ago, before leaving 101 the first time. 

“If it’ll get you out of the way, go check under the blast furnace in the Steelyard.” Midea finally relents and Grace wastes no time. She pulls the trigger and leaves. 

Bad Karma – bad blood – but Grace knows it doesn’t make a difference. For every act of good she does there are a dozen acts of evil waiting to kick her while she’s down. 

Now it’s her turn to do the kicking.

* * *

Wernher actually greets her when she walks through the door. “Ah, you finally made it! I have everything set up and ready, there are plenty of tests to run so hurry up and put the brat…” He says until he actually sees her. Until he notices that she is carrying an assault carbine and not a baby. “Wait, where’s the cure? Did you lose it? Where is the little bastard?” 

Grace can almost swear that one of her teeth cracks, her jaw clenches so hard. At the end of her rope, she says, “You never told me it meant kidnapping.” 

They scream at each other for a couple of long minutes. Grace can count on one hand the amount of people she despises as much as she does Wernher. And all those other people are wasteland rot for scavengers now.

“Here, I thought that you of all people would understand that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to make a difference. But you’re just a coward, afraid of making a choice!” Wernher shouts at her. “Afraid of changing the world!” 

Grace actually laughs at him and doesn’t deny it. She has already changed the world. She has shaped the outcomes of events that will be in effect for years to come.

She destroyed the Enclave, an entire force of power with a military might to rival the Brotherhood, and she did it for vengeance. Not for whatever peaceful illusion Elder Lyons tried to sell her, but because they had murdered her father. Project Purity was built at the cost of her parents and now the Capital Wasteland has clean water. But what about her? She wanders and finds all kinds of trouble. She wastes away in Rivet City with Butch and a bottle of whatever alcohol she can buy. She spends her days like Jericho. Because she knows her part in it is over and she has no purpose anymore. 

No more feelings: She has told herself a dozen times, only to run right to the Pitt because she bought Wernher’s sad story. She was looking for something - _anything_ \- to fill the emptiness. She hadn’t learned the lesson at Point Lookout. When Tobar cut out a piece of her own brain. 

She didn’t learn the lesson then, but the Pitt finally beat it into her. 

She puts three bullets in his chest. She watches him fall to the ground. Watches him bleed out as his shallow breathing slowly stops. 

She walks past him and rips apart the lab. Bottles and test tubes shatter into a million pieces against the wall. Liquids spill then drip between the grate to the floor below. She kicks the makeshift crib over. She _fixes_ the mess she helped create; the mess she entangled herself in. Because she's made a habit of fixing everyone else's mess since she left 101. 

When she’s done she walks to the door, fishing out a grenade. She pulls the pin, tosses it against the far wall, and walks out. 

Everyone is out for themselves. It is a harsh truth she has failed to learn for nearly a year now. She is not – will never again be – and instrument of someone else.

* * *

Ashur makes her a lieutenant, just as he said he would. It’s as empty as everything else. “You could live comfortably here,” he tells her but Graces knows her truth. She's done listening to the empty words of others. She's done doing the work no one else is willing to do. 

They tell her she can leave, and so she does. 

She walks back across the bridge she walked in on. "Welcome to the Pitt," it reads because someone has modified _Pittsburgh_. She walks along the cracked pavement and past the empty shells of cars until she’s back at the railway cart that leads back to the Capital Wasteland.

She hesitates. There is nothing there for her, that much she knows. Butch will move on without her. The Brotherhood no longer need her. Vault 101 certainly doesn’t need her. But she has a couple of loose threads she might as well tidy up before she wanders off again.

She answers to nobody, but she'll go home to finish what she's left undone.


	18. Leave the Homestead

Three weeks after the Pitt, Grace packs the few things she has left in Megaton. 

Wadsworth hovers a few feet behind her as she checks the drawers in her bedroom. “Where are you going, ma’am?” 

“Away,” Grace says, as she closes another empty drawer. Most are empty anyway, she never spent much time in the house to begin with. Too close to 101, she knows, but lately the whole Capital feels too close to everything.

“But to where?” The Mr. Handy unit asks.

“I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out. The roads usually lead somewhere.” She replies. She passes over the jar with a piece of her brain in it, then hesitates and returns to pick it up. She came back to get some closure, she shouldn’t leave anything undone behind. 

“But who will live here now?” Wadsworth asks anxiously, as he follows her downstairs to the living room. Where the picnic table sits and the bobblehead display stands. She walks to that and only takes the one that is the best preserved. The one that sat on her Father’s desk for nineteen years, with its little plastic syringe. 

“I’m giving the key to Butch,” she says. “And Charon has the spare if he ever comes back. I don’t really care. It’s up to them now to decide what to do with this place.” 

Once she’s sure that the essentials have successfully been packed, she shoulders her pack. Most of what was really important she kept on her, and is now lost to the Pitt. But perhaps it’s better that way. She wants to move on from the past anyway. 

She stands and gives the house one last look. She was here so rarely to begin with, it never really felt like home anyway. But now she’s leaving, probably for good, and there’s something she finds sad about the idea of never coming back. 

Wadsworth hovers in the middle of the room as she starts to walk towards the door. “Are you sure you want to leave?”

With her hand on the door knob, she says, “Yeah Wadsworth, I’m sure. Thank you for everything, but it’s time for me to go.” 

She doesn’t look back when she closes the door. She tests the lock then let’s it go. She puts one foot in front of the other and traces her way through the town one final time. She already said her good-byes to those that count, so she doesn’t linger. She walks past the gate and Deputy Weld and doesn’t look back as she hears the gates close behind her.

She walks up the road, through Springvale and back to the cliff side where Vault 101’s entrance is. She walks up the hill, and over the scenic outlook. She can see that there aren’t only her boot prints preserved in the dirt anymore, but it still feels like retracing her steps. She drops to her knees and begins to dig with her hands; moving rock and dirt until she has a decent sized hole. 

She pulls the jar with the chunk of her own brain from her pack and fits it in the hole. Perhaps it is a morbid thought, but she knows the reality that most people don’t get buried in the wasteland. She feels that this is fitting: part of her died when she left the Vault the first time and the time after that. She should have died after activating Project Purity, but she has escaped death quite a few times already. It seems fitting that a dead piece of her should stay here: outside the Vault and in the Capital. She may leave and never return, but this part of her will remain buried in a jar.

She moves the dirt back over the top of the jar and covers up the hole. She lays rocks, stacking them slightly. It’s a better grave than what most get: better than both her Father and Mother. Neither of them have a resting place, at least not one she knows of. She doubts the Enclave buried her Father. So perhaps this is for them too. 

When she finishes she stands, looks to the door to the cavern, but doesn’t enter. She doesn’t need to see the door, there’s nothing for her to see. She knows she isn’t welcome and she has a long road to walk. 

She walks back down the hill like she did the first time a little over a year ago.

* * *

“Are you serious?” Butch asks, but doesn’t move to take the key or deed to the house. He stays rooted to the spot on the bar stool. 

“Yes, I am.” Grace says, her had still outstretched to him. 

“So you’re just going and never coming back?” 

“I don’t really plan to.” She says honestly. “Just do me the favor and take the house.” 

Butch stares, his hands twitch around the neck of a beer bottle. “Why?” 

“Why what?” She huffs in response. She doesn’t want a long, dragged out conversation. She just wants him to take the stupid key and then she can go. Go, go, go, and never look back. 

“Why are you going?” 

Grace hesitates, then shrugs. “Same reason you said you left the Vault. There’s nothing here for me, no real opportunity.” 

“Bullshit,” Butch replies. “You’re a big damn hero, starting the purifier and cleaning up the Enclave’s stupid act. You’ve done way too much to just chuck it all up to being nothing.”

“Well, I’m done now, alright. I’m done doing everyone else’s work and cleaning up after everyone else’s mess. So I’m going.” She snaps. She'll go where no one knows her and no one has any expectations of her.

“Where are you going?” Butch asks.

“Anywhere else,” she replies. “Does it really matter?” Because the whole Capital feels like nothing but regret and heartache. Grace is done living in the shadow of the dead.

“Not really, just wanted to know if you have a plan.” He says and stands from the stool. “But keep your stupid key, or give it to someone else, because I’m coming with you.” 

Grace stares. Then she laughs. “No you’re not.” 

“What’s so funny about that? And sure I am; there’s no point staying in this dump if you’re not coming back.” 

“Butch-“

“No, look,” he interrupts. “There’s no point in wasting away at this bar if you’re not going to do it with me. I told you the Tunnel Snakes would slither again someday. So maybe they will somewhere else.” 

“So this is about your stupid gang?” She replies and feels the heat begin to build in her cheeks.

“What? No, no, you got it all wrong!” Butch replies. “I just mean, - look nosebleed, I like what we have. Sure you go off and do your thing, and I can respect that, but you’ve always come back. Without you there’s nothing here.” 

Grace shakes her head. She knows he only left the Vault when she did the second time because others were going out too. He was too much of a coward to do it himself, like saving his mother from a handful of radroaches. He hasn’t left Rivet City since arriving, she knows he is not built for the wastes. It’s too dangerous and though she has promised herself no more feelings many a night, for Butch she’ll make the exception: No more losing people.

She knows it seems like a futile idea; she knows the wastes will swallow everyone eventually. “No, Butch.” She leaves the key and deed on the bar counter between them. “You want to make something of yourself instead of rotting away in this bar, then go to Megaton. Ask Moira for a job or something, just don’t volunteer for her experiments. Or don’t and do something else. Either way, you have to do something for yourself. You can’t just keep waiting for me to show back up and make decisions for you.” 

Butch stares at the counter, then back at Grace. The way he’s taking it is worse than she anticipated. This is why she didn’t want a long conversation. 

“I’ve heard that up north isn’t too bad, we could probably find something up there.” 

“There is no “we”, Butch.”

“Fine, how about this: let me tag along. Let me try. If it doesn’t work out, then fine, we go our separate ways. Because you’re right, there is nothing here, and I’d still rather take my chances out there then head back to 101 or just sit around here till Belle kicks me out.” 

Grace sighs. “Butch, come one, I’ve been gone for months and now you only want to leave because I’m going.” 

“What’s wrong with that?” He asks.

“How about deciding for yourself?!” She snaps. “I can’t keep doing this, Butch. The drinking, the empty sex, and the running around each other. I’m not going to drag you out there and watch you get killed like everything else!” 

He stares at her, she stares back. He doesn't deny it and she doesn't back down. On the shelf she can hear the radio in the bar. “But Hey! That's okay!” She hears Three Dog say; some tail end of whatever news segment he’s giving. “This world has a way of getting under your skin and wiping the smile from your face. Makes you bitter. But you gotta fight that!”

‘ _I’ve been fighting it for too long, Three Dog_.’ She thinks. ‘ _There’s not a whole lot that comes out of the Good Fight. At least not for me_.’ 

So she finally breaks the silence growing between them, “Keep the house or sell it, Butch. I really don’t care what you do.” 

“I think you do.” Butch replies, “Why else would you keep coming back?”

She can feel her teeth start to grind. “You’re right, I do care. I care too fucking much.” Grace replies. “That’s why you’re not coming with me. I can’t watch you die out there. I can’t do it, and I won’t.”

“Grace –“

“No, Butch.” It is her turn to interrupt. “I was at Point Lookout for two months, for all you know I could’ve been dead. And I was a slave in the Pitt for a week; I could’ve been for the rest of my life and you never would’ve known! So this time I’m telling you to move on because I’m not coming back.” 

“I don’t see why I can’t just go with –“

“Because the roads are dangerous and I’m not following a caravan the whole way.” Grace says. _Why is he being so difficult?_ “You’re right when you said things out here are better for you. You have work, you earn your caps, and you eat better than you did on the Vault’s ration tickets. You’re capable here, you have things and opportunities here that the Vault didn’t offer. So take the house, or continue living in a hotel room. That’s up to you, but I have to go and I don’t want you waiting around for me to show back up again.” 

She turns and starts walking towards the door.

“Grace!” Butch calls, but she does not stop. She does not look back. He would only follow her to his death and she does not want that. She’s seen too many people die, she can’t keep doing it.

She hears Three Dog on the radio as she walks out of the market, on her way out of Rivet City. “And now for some music. This is Bob Crosby, takin' us, _Way Back Home_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is, the last chapter in Grace's Capital Wasteland story. I don't think this will be the last time seeing Grace, I think she still has some interesting adventures ahead of her. But for now, this is where it ends. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who had read and commented and left kudos! The support, feedback, and encouragement has really meant a lot to me!
> 
> * * *
> 
> Also, in case anyone was curious, here are Grace's SPECIAL stats by the end of the game:  
> S: 4, P:7, E: 5, C:7, I:7, A:6, L:4


End file.
